Mitt Romney Quotes
That makes no sense for someone to say if they were drafted by their country, that they'd say no.
Romney, Mitt. Interview. Fox News, 2012.
This principle became the Civil War Draft. Ironically, when the draft was legislated by Congress, there were relatively few men drafted as enlistments increased. See {621897} .
Debs was jailed for sedition for this speech.
Monroe was then Secretary of State and the U. S. was at war.
Theoretically every male citizen was supposed to serve in the Militia at that time. But if one did not, the penalty was a small fine. It became a status symbol. Those middle and upper class men who could get commissions as officers would serve, but those who did not have the political connections or the money to equip his own troops, would rather pay the fine than serve with men he thought beneath him. There is a , romantic American myth about the Militiamen in Colonial and Revolutionary America—the citizen soldiers who would leave their farms and rise to the military necessity of the day. However, not only were the militia very hard to muster to duty, but most actually didn’t own or have experience with firearms, and the prevailing opinion of knowledgeable military leaders from George Washington on down was that the militia were not very good soldiers. See {613015}, {613016}, {613022}, {613027}, {621987}, {621988}, {613030}, {613033}, & {613056}
This was the inception of the Civil War draft.
Many of the young men who were given this form to fill out, had never been in Japan and some did not even know there was an emperor there. Nonetheless the Japanese American divisions of enlistees were the most effective and most decorated fighting units for America while their parents who had not been born in America were still imprisoned in the internment camps. See {624010}.
At the time veterans would have to wait for up to a year till they could get their records and their benefits from the Veterans Administration which had insufficient budget while the Defense Department had as much money as the Military-Industrial complex could lobby for.
This is surprising to most people who believed the the Vietnam War draft resistance was the first in American History and an aberation. Actually, there have been active draft resistance in America as long as there has been military conscription.
Willard Mitt Romney is an American politician and businessman who has served as the junior United States senator from Utah since January 2019, succeeding Orrin Hatch. He served as the 70th governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and was the Republican Party's nominee for president of the United States in the 2012 election.