ReThink History: Greeting: America and the Draft

society, culture, history · EN-US

For two centuries, one word — "Greeting" — opened the letter that could send an American man to war. This 12-part ReThink History series tells the whole history of the U.S. military draft and the conscientious objectors who refused it, from colonial militia fines to the automatic registration system switching on in December 2026. It's a history most of the country has never heard. Local draft boards — "little groups of neighbors" who were overwhelmingly older, white, and well-connected — held life-and-death discretion over who served, while the wealthy could buy a Civil War substitute for $300 or ride a Vietnam-era student deferment to safety. And the conscientious objectors who refused to kill parachuted into wildfires as America's first CO smokejumpers, starved themselves for famine science, exposed the horrors of state mental hospitals, served the front lines as unarmed medics — one earned the Medal of Honor at Hacksaw Ridge — and helped write the nonviolent playbook of the civil-ri