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Defining Documents in American History: Dissent and Protest

Anti-War Activism

Pacifism and anti-war activism in the United States has a long history. The documents we present in this section provide an overview of opinions that span the twentieth century and reach into the twenty-first. We have gathered expressions of opposition to American military activities from three divisive conflicts. The earliest of these conflicts is the First World War, which began in 1914, but which the United States did not enter until 1917. Opposition from the war came from a number of quarters, but all three of these documents are concerned with the threat American participation in the conflict—and war in general—pose to the working classes of the United States. While all three share this common point of protest, the figures who presented them represent a spectrum of political thought. Robert La Follette was solidly a member of the political establishment, serving as a Senator from Wisconsin and one of the most prominent Progressive voices in the United States. His Speech Opposing War with Germany, delivered shortly before the American declaration of war, presents his case that the war has been devastating for the working classes of the nations involved, that it would be equally devastating to the workers of America, and that the majority of Americans oppose getting involved. Following the declaration of war, labor activist Eugene V. Debs’s Antiwar Speech and anarchist Emma Goldman’s Speech against Conscription and War not only criticized the war but also encouraged American men to not enlist and to resist conscription. Advocating these positions placed Goldman and Debs outside the bounds of the restrictive limitations on free speech and dissent that the federal government had imposed to promote national unity during wartime.

The Vietnam War, which dominated the 1960s and early 1970s, heavily contributed to the increasing divisions that were emerging in the United States. These fault lines, which were political, generational, and racial, were exacerbated not only by the government’s decision to pursue war in Southeast Asia but also by the manner in which that war was conducted. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., in his 1967 speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” criticizes the war’s effects on impoverished and minority communities in the United States as well as the effects of the war on America’s standing among developing, postcolonial nations. Future Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry, representing thousands of his comrades in his Testimony of the Vietnam Veterans against the War before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, after serving in Vietnam for four months, harshly criticizes the policies that led to horrific atrocities against civilians in Southeast Asia, the treatment of returning veterans, and the Cold War worldview that has led to the United States allowing its fear of communist expansion to override every other consideration. Like King, Kerry draws connections between the war in Vietnam and the racial strife dividing the United States.

This section concludes in the twenty-first century, with West Virginia Senator Robert C Byrd and his 2004 speech centered on the well-known fable in which The Emperor Has No Clothes. This is only one of the over twenty speeches against the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent war. Byrd opposition to the war does not come from a place of pacifism but, rather, because of what he argues is the blatant dishonesty of the George W. Bush administration—particularly its lies to the American people as well as the international community about the threat that Sadaam Hussein’s regime posed to the region. Byrd’s questioning of the legitimacy of the war echoes the concerns raised by Kerry, King, Debs, and Goldman in the previous century.

Citation Types

MLA 9th
"Anti-War Activism." Defining Documents in American History: Dissent and Protest, edited by Aaron Gulyas, Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=DDProtest_0099.
APA 7th
Anti-War Activism. Defining Documents in American History: Dissent and Protest, In A. Gulyas (Ed.), Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=DDProtest_0099.
CMOS 17th
"Anti-War Activism." Defining Documents in American History: Dissent and Protest, Edited by Aaron Gulyas. Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=DDProtest_0099.