The end of my military service occurred on the first day of January 1975, which culminated twenty-two years and seven months of Air Force duty. With a Regular Commission it was my option to stay on board longer, but with what I considered less desirable duty assignments forthcoming it seemed the appropriate time to become a member of the civilian population. At that time the Air Force had an abundance of pilot rated field grade officers and had begun a process of reducing those numbers by various assignments into other than line flying positions. That had been my fate when I had been transferred from flying the Northrup T-38 at Randolph Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas to an Air Defense Command unit at Luke AFB, Arizona. It was there that I had spent the last two years in a large block house with the prime function of overseeing a large crew of technicians that provided radar coverage over the southwest United States monitoring good guys in training missions and potential bad guys from infringing on our air space.
Flying the sleek supersonic T-38 was pure pleasure and it was obviously extremely disappointing to be removed from the flying environment that had been challenging and enjoyable from a personal and professional view point for many years. In late 1974 I had served as a Lieutenant Colonel for four years and within two years would have been considered for promotion to full Colonel. My record within the military was such that my chances for this promotion would have been quite possible, but in spite of that my decision to retire was based on a consideration of many factors. The key factor in the decision to retire was simply that I did not particularly enjoy being removed from the cockpit and the enjoyment of flight endeavors.
My academic background prior to beginning an Air Force career had been simply a high school graduate. During the time in service I had enrolled in several evening time college courses and had attended military schools worthy of academic credit. But I had not attained a college degree.
After retirement and while pursuing other avocations in civilian life I easily took courses at Allegany Community College and attained a Associate of Arts degree in Business Administration and followed that by enrolling at Frostburg State College. After a period of time my other interests became more paramount and I began to feel that a four year degree would be a worthy pursuit but I was only proving a bit of self satisfaction. After completing several courses I acquired the total credit hours sufficient for a four year degree, but that were unfortunately not complimentary. At that point I ceased my academic pursuits. I felt that should anyone desire to know, at that stage in my life, my degree was from the UHK, or the University of Hard Knocks.
While attending Frostburg State University in 1979 it was my pleasure to attend a History 474 course with Harry Stegmaier, Jr. as the Professor. In conjunction with that course a research report was required and I chose the topic of amnesty in the United States. That term paper was judged by Professor Stegmaier to be of high quality. A great deal of time and effort went into the written report, including visits to the Carlisle, Pennsylvania Army War College where valuable reference material was available. The following is a repeat of that report excluding the footnotes and bibliography.
A STUDY OF AMNESTY IN THE UNITED STATES SINCE 1918
Research Report
Charles W. Armstrong
History 474 – Section 001
24 April 1979
INTRODUCTION
The subject of amnesty instigates a debate that is almost as old as mankind’s involvement in warfare. The moral dilemma that lies at its core sets those who have served their conscience in wartime against those who have served both their conscience and their flag. It is an emotional issue, one that time will lessen but probably never totally heal. Unlike many governmental decisions, a compromise settlement on the employment of amnesty will not come close to satisfying all, or probably a majority, of those with strong views one way or another.
When reviewing research material available on the subject one finds most of it highly subjective. There is much more written in favor of the use of amnesty versus the opinions of those who would vigorously oppose its implementation. The protest movement of the 1960’s produced many vocal champions, and the Vietnam War lent itself to much debate regarding amnesty. Our affluent society and better educated masses seek out these issues more openly but there are many who probably prefer to remain among the silent ones on topics such as amnesty and pardons following war time.
The amnesty question is a thicket of thorny moral issues. Is it the state forgiving the exiles and protesters or should it be the other way around? If the government does forgive, does that really overcome the problems and lessen the profound feelings associated with this issue?
This small dissertation is simply an effort at looking at the meaning of amnesty, how and when it has been utilized in the United States in the 1900’s, who constitute the people that are affected by its use, and some of the feelings and reactions associated with its use or non-use.
A STUDY OF AMNESTY IN THE UNITED STATES SINCE 1918
In a discussion of amnesty and resisters to wars it is necessary to group the types of people involved. In this endeavor, it is difficult to stereotype any group of people and then to further discuss their actions, feelings, and causes without alienating a great deal of the individuals in the group. In this comparison the problem is even more acute. No one individual fits the mold of the group taken as a whole. Therefore, one can only acknowledge this fact and make prior apologies to any personal reactions when the categorical groups are addressed.
In the current time (1979) both the Vietnam veteran and the draft resister are from the same general age bracket and were reared in a rapidly changing time. It would be safe to say almost all had some exposure to the feelings and reactions of some relative or friend who was directly involved in the Korean conflict or in World War II. In many cases this would have been a father, brother, or uncle. The point is that practically all have had intimate personal feelings and exposure to wars of the modern age and have had at least a partial background removed from the reading of history books.
Some served as a direct participant in the Vietnam War and some did not. There are those who were volunteers for military action and many who were involuntarily inducted. Of all of the two and one-half million members of the armed forces some 600,000 served in the Vietnam War at one time or another. According to Department of Defense figures more than 46,000 men were killed by enemy action in Vietnam and over 303,000 were wounded.
It is estimated in widely ranging figures that between 200,000 and 500,000 young men fell into the category of dodging the draft or deserting the armed forces during the time of the Vietnam conflict. These men can be subdivided into a large number of categories; draft evaders, draft resisters, deserters both before or after entry on active duty, those who departed the country in protest, those who protested but fought their battle within the country, conscientious objectors, those who used legal means to evade the draft through educational deferment or by parental assistance or influence, and those who deserted while on active duty for reason of conscience. These groupings are not unique in their application to any war but are more germane to our thinking of the Vietnam conflict, especially considering it has certainly been our most unpopular war. All wars cause a certain amount of divisiveness in its people but this one certainly seemed to do so to a much larger degree.
Amnesty is not new in history. The first recorded amnesty seems to have been granted by Thrasylulus in 403 B.C. There were others in England in 1652 after the civil war and in 1660 at the time of the Restoration. In the United States Lincoln’s amnesty proclamation of 1863 was followed by others granted by Andrew Johnson in 1865, 1867, and 1868. The first significant instance in this country was the July 1795 grant of pardon or amnesty by President Washington to Whiskey Rebellion insurrectionists. In May 1800 President Adams pardoned Pennsylvanians who opposed property laws.
But what is the meaning of amnesty? A look at its etymology reveals it is derived from “not”, and “remember”, or as used in early times, a kind of general pardon which a prince granted his subjects. A valid current definition would be as follows. Amnesty is “an act of grace by which the supreme power in a state restores those who may have been guilty of any offense against it to the position of innocent person. It includes more than pardon, inasmuch as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the offense”.
One finds the words pardon and amnesty used almost interchangeably but there is a difference. Pardon indicates a remission of punishment or penalty without indicating exoneration from guilt. Amnesty indicates a general remission of punishment, penalty, retribution, or disfavor to a whole group or class and it may imply a promise to forget. Therefore, a pardon implies forgiveness while an amnesty implies forgetting as well, somewhat like the Indian custom of burying the hatchet. Further, a pardon is generally considered as being given to an individual whereas a group is the beneficiary of an amnesty.
The power of pardon and, implicitly, amnesty is granted to the Executive by Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution: “The President….shall have the power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment”. The Supreme Court ruled in 1896 that Congress can also exercise such authority. In addition to being a governmental act that obliterates past criminal offenses, amnesty, in a military sense, signifies the pardon by a sovereign to deserters, on condition of their joining their units or other stipulation.
Amnesty, when granted, is either general and unlimited, or particular and unrestrained. It has rarely been applied universally, without conditions or exceptions. The proponents of amnesty, when arguing their case, almost always will propose unlimited or universal amnesty as the only proper way to totally forgive and forget.
In World War I conscientious objectors who could demonstrate their affiliation with a religious body with creedal objections to all war service were exempted from fighting, but not from non-combative service designated by the President. There were no provisions for absolute objectors to military directed or compulsory service nor any for objectors motivated by political judgments. Most men of these classes ended in military prison where many of them languished well after the Armistice. By that time 3,989 men had been classified as conscientious objectors and 2,599 of them had been furloughed into various forms of military service. But over three million men had been inducted in a military system of immense proportions. After 1918 conscription faded into history despite efforts to continue it. But this lasted only briefly. In 1926 manpower procurement planning for the next war began with the creation of a joint Army-Navy Selective Service Committee. Conscription was included but was dropped. In 1940 Selective Service was adopted over strong opposition, the first peacetime draft in the nations’ history. This system provided for a series of Civilian Public Service Camps for conscientious objectors.
Whenever there has been warfare there have been efforts to mobilize manpower, to create fighting forces. Many societies have resorted to some form of compulsion in order to supplement their trained, professional military corps. Conscription for war is as old an institution as imperial China, and avoiding war service is an equally ancient pattern of behavior.
Conscription is the most extreme form of social coercion. It differs from other forms such as the rule of law in that a soldier is drafted for purposes he did not fashion, as a consequence of decisions he did not shape. It differs from other forms such as taxes in that the state levies the whole lives of some citizens and claims total jurisdiction over the livelihood of all. Whatever their ideologies, nations employ military conscription in order to raise armed forces sufficiently large to wage total war to defend the national interest, or to invade and occupy foreign territory, and to raise them without imperiling other aspects of social organization. The more complex the society, the more complex will be the conscripting bureaucracy. Totalitarian states justify conscription on the basis of military efficiency and the total allegiance of the citizen, and democratic states justify it as democracy’s way of meeting a national crisis. In the United States the draft is dignified with the euphemism, “Selective Service”.
Military conscription became a reality during World War I. Barely one percent of the population had been mobilized for war by seventeenth-century powers. The belligerents of the First World War mobilized fourteen percent or more of their populations for war service, and they largely directed the civilian support of the rest. Resistance to military conscription in Great Britain and the United States at that time seemed to derive more from apprehension of centralized authority than from a commitment of peacefulness.
Despite the fact that the threat to national security was far more clear in World War II than in World War I, the percentage of inducted men recognized as conscientious objectors increased three times, from 0.14 to 0.42 percent. These figures are, however, misleading as they include conscientious objectors who accepted noncombatant service (1-A-O status) for which figures are not available.
It has been suggested that the determination to avoid conscription or to leave military service illegally cannot be considered as an evasion of responsibility. Some would say that, in fact, the awful array of consequences to such an action – separation from home, family and friends; acceptance of virtual criminal status; alienation from a government that espouses as goals the very ideals for which many conscientious objectors fled the country indicate that a heavier and more personal responsibility was more a grim alternative than an easy way out. Perhaps the “American chicken”, whose footprints have appeared on automobile bumpers and protest signs, may be found equally plentiful among the thousands of young men who found conscription repugnant, the Vietnam war even more so, but accepted military service rather than face questions of conscience and the consequences of their revolution.
Including the first employment of amnesty in the United States, the pardon of 1,795 participants in the Whiskey Rebellion by George Washington, there have been thirty-four separate recorded incidents of its use in American history. The use of amnesty by our government since 1918 has been less than one may suspect. The following summarizes the use of amnesty since World War I:
1. In 1924 President Coolidge granted amnesty and restored citizenship to 100 men who had deserted after the World War I Armistice of November 1918 and before the final peace treaty.
2. President Roosevelt, in 1933, granted amnesty and restored citizenship to 1,500 violators of draft laws who had completed their sentences.
3. In December 1946 President Truman created the President’s Amnesty Board to review 15,805 violators of the Selective Service Act of 1940. A year later, in December 1947, adhering to the recommendation of the board, he pardoned 1,523.
4. President Truman in December 1952 issued two proclamations of pardon, the pardon of ex-convicts who had served at least one year in the Korean War, and amnesty for those who deserted between July 14, 1945 and June 25, 1950.
5. In 1974 President Ford announced an earned-clemency program for Vietnam era draft evaders and deserters who agreed to do public service work for up to two years, but only a small portion of those eligible applied by the closing date of March 31, 1975.
6. In 1977 President Carter pardoned draft evaders and ordered a review of 432,000 less-than-honorable discharges (other than for desertion) of Vietnam veterans for possible upgrading.
There was no amnesty of any kind after the Korean War. There is no record of Presidential pardon or amnesty for draft evaders or deserters from 1952 until President Ford’s conditional clemency of 1974.
In Vietnam there was a rate of desertion never before observed. As many as 50,000 draft resisters and deserters were reported living in Canada, Sweden, and elsewhere. An estimated 9,000 served terms in United States jails.
Who constitutes the class directly enmeshed in these issues? According to the New York Times January 30, 1973, there were then over 10,000 draft resisters in civil or military prison, on probation, or awaiting court action; some 80,000 draft resisters underground in the United States; between 60,000 and 100,000 draft resisters in exile; and, 388,000 Vietnam veterans with less than honorable discharges (this figure includes men convicted of actual crimes as well as those who disobeyed military orders in the spirit of resisting war efforts, racism, and arbitrary authority). According to Department of Defense figures there were 423,000 deserters in the fiscal years 1965 through 1972. No other American war has met with such resistance. At no previous time has the institution of military conscription evoked a magnitude of objection. The question of amnesty has assumed unparalleled importance in the 1970’s.
During the Korean War the Selective Service System felt hamstrung by public apathy. There seemed to be little understanding of why we were fighting. These difficulties multiplied enormously in the Vietnam War. By December 1970 there were 46,801 conscientious objectors and 2,559,203 men under arms; by the end of the American direct involvement there were probably three times the number of objectors as there were in all of World War II.
Opponents of general amnesty argue that it would be grossly unfair to the men who accepted service under the law, interrupted their careers, were subsequently maimed, taken prisoner, or died in service, as well as unfair to their families. At the very least, it is argued, pardon should be extended only to those who either accepted alternative service or the penalties of the law during the war or to those who would accept a term of alternative service in the future. Advocates of amnesty point out that both those who openly took a conscientious objector position and those who went underground or into exile have already paid a penalty in the interruption of their lives and in their alienation from normal society. Beside, they add, these young men did not put themselves in their untenable position. In any case, they argue, it is impossible to establish fairness on individual merits. Given the great variety of situations and motivations and the likely bias of a review board, it is unquestionably true that a policy of individual pardons could not achieve fairness.
It is also argued that the requirement of alternative service after the cessation of war and induction would work a double indemnity on objectors, evaders, and deserters alike and would require them all to acknowledge precisely what the most sincere of them denied in the first place; that the nation was right in enforcing compliance in the war, and that they were wrong in opposing it. In short, it is argued, to replace a general amnesty with a conditional one is equivalent to adopting a policy of pardons which would yield great questions of equity that would be virtually impossible to solve.
Opponents of a general amnesty also argue that the national interest requires a disciplined military force filled to the limits set by Congress, and that for this purpose an enforceable military draft is requisite. Advocates of amnesty echo Andrew Johnson’s words and argue that the preeminent national interest in the aftermath of a divisive war is political and social reconciliation.
The patriotic argument against amnesty shades into one based, really, on equity. How do you justify letting dodgers and deserters off scot-free when other men in the same situation have, usually against their wishes, gone off to fight and sometimes die? American soldiers who served in Vietnam do not tend to take a very moralistic view of the war and of a man’s duty to his country but they feel that if they had to put up with a hateful job, it isn’t right to let others avoid it with impunity.
It would pave the way toward what in effect would become selective conscientious objection – anyone could opt out of a war he did not want to fight, secure in the belief that he would win amnesty later.
Amnesty Now, a national coalition with some 300 members, makes the point that the only proper amnesty is the one that make the moral point that our government was wrong and these young men were right. They state that if this country were willing to make that point officially, it would clear the air and end a lot of the alienation. They also emphasize that the point of amnesties has always been to erase the moral slate completely, not to find some new party guilty.
The U. S. Army Command in 1975 published the results of a survey of the 5,501 individuals that participated in President Ford’s clemency program. It was found that sixty-six percent of these had less than a high school education. The reasons for their desertion broke down as follows: fifty-nine percent for personal, family or financial reason, fifteen percent due to adjustments to the military, fourteen percent due to objections to the war, and the remainder gave other reasons. Of the fourteen percent who indicated their reason for deserting as objectors to the war, their reasons can be further categorized as follows: forty-nine percent for anti-Vietnam reasons, eight percent for pacifist’s beliefs, and forty-three percent stated they simply did not want to serve.
A Gallup poll reported by Newsweek on January 18, 1972, as the Vietnam War was terminating, indicated mixed feelings regarding amnesty. The question was posed, “Do you favor or oppose amnesty for Americans who have left the country to avoid the draft and for those who have gone to jail rather than be drafted?”. In response fifty-eight percent were opposed, twenty-eight percent were in favor, and fourteen percent had no opinion. But when asked the same general question but with the condition of evaders doing stints of national service, much like that required of conscientious objectors, sixty-three percent were in favor of amnesty with the service requirement.
On March 13, 1972 a U. S. News & World Report article stated that Senator Ten Kennedy’s mail on the subject of amnesty was running twenty to thirty to one against it. Kennedy felt that unconditional amnesty at that time was unrealistic.
The resisters directly affected by any amnesty decision are often quoted directly by the media. An example would be Doug Griffin, age 24, a draft dodger living in Vancouver, who was quoted in the February 12, 1973 issue of Newsweek. “I think of amnesty as an act of humility by the people of America. They still don’t realize that people who refused to participate in the war are not traitors. They were obeying a higher moral law. They simple didn’t want to kill people”.
James Reston, Jr., writing of the Vietnam War, felt that the country’s view of a hero has changed drastically. When in May of 1972 the Navy acquired its first aces of the war, the two pilots who had shot down five MIG’s over North Vietnam, Reston felt the “….celebrations were curiously flat”. His opinion was that the real heroes were on the ground and not Caucasian. In 1972 Reston worked with the Safe Return organization to bring home a deserter, “X”, who was John David Herndon. His return from exile in France was accomplished under carefully staged conditions with the maximum of television coverage. In response to a pointed question, Herndon responded with his feelings. “Well, I’ve been wounded three times over there. And I’ve seen guys laying there beside me who have had their legs blown off and were protesting the war, because they didn’t know what the hell they were over there fighting for”.
There are extremely strong views on both sides of any amnesty issue and whether amnesty is employed or not those views will not rapidly change.
CONCLUSION
Amnesty is a fairly easy subject to define but it appears certain that there is not unanimity in the minds of people considering this topic. While there may be a general agreement on a definition, there is no agreement among the leaders of the populace of the United States as to when amnesty is to be granted, or how, or who is to be the recipient of the act.
The utilization of amnesty in this country has been a mixed bag. A degree of its use has been evident in all of our wars since 1918 save one. Why was there not amnesty of any kind after the Korean War? Was it because of the nature of the “police action” involvement of the United States? That question will remain unanswered but since we are considered somewhat of a benevolent society and probably more forgiving than most countries of this universe, one would expect more consistency in the application of amnesty than has been evident.
I do admit to a bias in an amnesty discussion, having served over twenty-two years in the U. S. Air Force, including a year in Vietnam in 1966-67. I have many friends who served in that war and some who gave their life in doing what was asked of them. Of the more than 700 men still carried on the missing rolls (after the return of our known POW’s), two were among my personal acquaintances. I am proud of the service I was able to perform and will not shrink from that thought, historical judgments aside. I do give thanks that I was fortunate to survive and carry on a productive life.
With that background a few comments follow. The Vietnam veteran is fast becoming an invisible individual. Most probably enjoy the anonymity and are glad to rejoin the civilian society in that vein. The majority, however, feel uncomfortable when they hear the phrase used that the resisters/evaders “obeyed a higher law, that of their own consciences, and fled”. Well, most veterans that I know did not have a lack of conscience. Nor was their crime in obeying a “lower law”, or one that his country directed at him. As a group I do not feel that the Vietnam veteran is to be pitied or that he is owed more than he is given. But I do feel uneasy when amnesty is discussed and an equal compassion is not directed to those who served as to those who did not.
In 1973, in one of my last additional duty requirements of military career, I was assigned as an investigative officer to compile a report and recommendation on the conscientious objector application of a young airman I will call “Ray”. Reared as a Catholic and supporting that faith most of his life, he had an uneventful and contented first three years as an Air Force enlisted man serving in the munitions field. Shocked by his parents divorce, he shortly afterward married a girl of Spanish extraction like himself, and then his world really came apart. Sent to Vietnam, he got deep into drugs, participated in the black market, and was apprehended on the same day his wife delivered their baby in the States. During his time in the stockade, he felt his wife had deserted him. He lived with a Vietnamese call girl, “the only one who really understood him”. Back in the states, divorced, and supporting his child of whom he had obtained custody, Ray found new beliefs in the Jehovah’s Witness faith. He then sought conscientious objector status and wished to be free to fully participate in this religion and to do so unencumbered by the past. From age 20 to 24, his life had been one of turbulent happenings, but now he had seen the light and was assured of the direction of his life. As has been pointed out, there is no typical resistor but this case displays how a war can change an individual in a whirlwind fashion.
What is the answer? If this nation must have a military draft, then it must accept the conscientious objector/evader as a necessary condition of it, reminding us that objections to that conscription will inevitably arise. When we create classes of alienated young men in wartime, we must seek ways of reconciling them to constructive, civilian peace. We need to be reminded that we are a society based on consent. There are no quick or simple solutions. Education, compassion, and a profound understanding of our fellow human beings are considered essential to the solution of this problem.
Wings Over Cumberland 