c. 1450–1600
Warring Iroquois tribes unite in a confederacy symbolized by a “Tree of Great Peace.”
1681
The English Quaker William Penn, having recently become owner and ruler of a large tract of land in North America, writes to the Indians there on October 18: “God hath written his law in our hearts; by which we are taught and commanded to love and help and do good to one another, and not to do harme and mischeif.”
1755
On December 16, during the French and Indian War, John Woolman and others send an “Epistle of Tender Love and Caution” to their fellow Pennsylvania Quakers, urging nonpayment of taxes “intended for purposes inconsistent with our peaceable testimony.”
1759
Quaker Anthony Benezet delivers a Thanksgiving sermon in Philadelphia on November 29, published as “Thoughts on the Nature of War, and Its Repugnancy to the Christian Life.”
1777
On October 3, Delaware Quakers appoint Warner Mifflin and others to visit William Howe and George Washington, generals of the British and American armies, hoping to persuade them to declare an armistice that might “lead to a good understanding and eventually to peace.”
1782
Benjamin Franklin writes to an English friend, Jonathan Shipley, on June 10: “After much Occasion to consider the Folly and Mischiefs of a State of Warfare, and the little or no Advantage obtained even by those Nations who have conducted it with the most Success, I have been apt to think that there has never been or ever will be any such Thing as a good War or a bad Peace.”
1785
In a letter to his former military aide David Humphreys on July 25, George Washington writes of war: “My first wish is to see this plague to Mankind banished from the Earth; & the Sons & daughters of this World employed in more pleasing & innocent amusements than in preparing implements, & exercising them for the destruction of the human race.”
Benjamin Rush publishes “A Plan of a Peace-Office for the United States.”
1794
Thomas Jefferson writes Tench Coxe on May 1: “As to myself, I love peace, and I am anxious that we should give the world still another useful lesson, by shewing to them other modes of punishing injuries than by war, which is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.”
1795
Among his “Political Observations,” James Madison writes on April 20: “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion of the few.”
1812
Delegates from fifty-three towns in western Massachusetts convene in Northampton on July 14, and call on President Madison to seek peace with Great Britain instead of pursuing “an offensive war, which we believe to be neither just, necessary nor expedient.”
1815
The New York Peace Society, organized by David Low Dodge, is established on August 16; the first such group known to exist anywhere in the world, it aims “to discourage war, and promote peace, by circulating Tracts and other publications tending to show that war is inconsistent with Christianity, and the true interests of mankind,” and counts about thirty members. Dodge publishes War Inconsistent with the Religion of Jesus Christ. The Massachusetts Peace Society follows soon afterward, on December 28; it is led by Noah Worcester and William Ellery Channing, and produces the quarterly journal Friend of Peace.
1820
More than thirty peace societies are operating in the United States.
1823
The Massachusetts Peace Society reports a membership of approximately one thousand; unlike most early peace societies, it accepts women in its ranks.
1828
On May 8, the American Peace Society is founded in New York, merging the Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania peace societies; it publishes the journal Harbinger of Peace and later Advocate of Peace. William Ladd, a Maine farmer and sea captain, proposes the merger and donates his fortune to the new organization.
1838
Ralph Waldo Emerson gives one of a series of lectures sponsored by the American Peace Society in Boston on March 12. (Billed as “The Peace Principle,” it is later published as “War.”) The New England Non-Resistance Society is established in September at a Boston peace convention organized by William Lloyd Garrison.
1840
William Ladd publishes An Essay on a Congress of Nations, for the Adjustment of International Disputes without Resort to Arms.
1843
Adin Ballou is chosen as president of the New England Non-Resistance Society.
1845
George C. Beckwith edits The Book of Peace: A Collection of Essays on War and Peace.
1846
Elihu Burritt (the “learned blacksmith”) founds the League of Universal Brotherhood, which seeks “to employ all legitimate and moral means for the abolition of all war, and all the spirit, and all the manifestations of war, throughout the world”; it claims a U.S. membership of 25,000. Theodore Parker preaches a “Sermon of War” in Boston on June 7; he will speak out against the Mexican-American War on many occasions. In July, Henry David Thoreau is arrested and spends a night in jail for refusing to pay poll taxes because of his opposition to slavery and the Mexican-American War; he later writes “Resistance to Civil Government” (also titled “Civil Disobedience”) in explanation of his actions. Adin Ballou publishes Christian Non-Resistance in All Its Important Bearings.
1848
Abraham Lincoln (Whig–IL) describes the Mexican-American War as “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced” in a speech in Congress on January 12. Elihu Burritt organizes an International Peace Congress, held in Brussels in September; he also supports congresses in Paris in 1849 and Frankfurt in 1850.
1849
Charles Sumner speaks on “The War System of the Commonwealth of Nations” before the American Peace Society on May 28.
Hoping to avoid civil war, Elihu Burritt lectures widely to promote “compensated emancipation,” and publishes A Plan of Brotherly Co-Partnership of the North and South for the Peaceful Extinction of Slavery.
1859
William Lloyd Garrison and others praise militant abolitionist John Brown at a Boston mass meeting on December 2, the day of Brown’s hanging: “Give me, as a non-resistant, Bunker Hill, and Lexington, and Concord, rather than the cowardice and servility of a Southern slave plantation.” Adin Ballou criticizes such “bellicose John Brown Non-resistants” in his journal Practical Christian, claiming they have abandoned their principles.
1861
Gerrit Smith, secretary of the American Peace Society, writes in a public letter on May 18: “when Slavery is gone from the whole world, the whole world will then be freed not only from a source of war, but from the most cruel and horrid form of war. For Slavery is war as well as the source of war. Thus has the Peace Society, as well as the Abolition Society, much to hope for from this grand uprising of the North.” On July 20, the New York Tribune pejoratively describes conservative antiwar Democrats as “Copperheads.”
1862
Alfred Henry Love publishes An Appeal in Vindication of Peace Principles; unlike fellow members of the American Peace Society, he opposes the Union war effort.
1863
Ezra H. Heywood reaffirms pacifist principles in a Boston address, “The War Method of Peace,” on June 14: “war is wrong—wrong yesterday, wrong today, wrong forever.” Cyrus Pringle and two other conscientious objectors are granted parole from military service at the “urgent wish” of President Lincoln on November 7.
1864
Congress exempts members of “religious denominations, who shall by oath and affirmation declare that they are conscientiously opposed to the bearing of arms” from military service; such objectors would be assigned noncombatant roles in hospitals or overseeing freed slaves.
1866
The Universal Peace Union is established in Providence, Rhode Island, by Adin Ballou, Joshua Blanchard, Alfred Henry Love, Lucretia Mott, and others; they call for immediate disarmament, publish the journal Bond of Peace, and begin meeting regularly each summer in “peace encampments” in Mystic, Connecticut.
1870
Julia Ward Howe, author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” issues an “Appeal to Womanhood throughout the World” in September, during the Franco-Prussian War, calling for an international women’s peace congress “to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”
1871
The American Peace Society permits women to hold official positions in the organization.
1888
At Swarthmore College, William Penn Holcomb teaches “Elements of International Law, with special attention to the important subjects of peace and arbitration,” the earliest known “Peace Studies” course.
1893
Chicago hosts the Fifth Universal Peace Congress in August, in association with the World’s Columbian Exposition.
1895
The first Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration is held at Lake Mohonk, New York; it continues annually until World War I.
1898
The American Anti-Imperialist League, established on June 15 during the Spanish-American War, opposes the annexation of Spanish territory.
1902
Textbook publisher Edwin Ginn issues the first in a series of inexpensive books and pamphlets, later named the International Library of Peace.
1903
Andrew Carnegie donates $1,500,000 for the construction of a “Temple of Peace” at The Hague, to house sessions of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
1904
The Thirteenth Universal Peace Congress, held in Boston, is attended by three thousand.
1906
The American Society of International Law is established; it promotes the resolution of international disputes by legal means and arbitration rather than war. In a lecture titled “The Psychology of the War Spirit,” later revised and published as “The Moral Equivalent of War,” William James argues that martial virtues should be harnessed and redirected to peaceful ends. Theodore Roosevelt is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in negotiating treaty ending the Russo-Japanese War.
1907
Andrew Carnegie and the New York Peace Society sponsor a National Peace Congress in New York.
1910
The International School of Peace is founded by Edwin Ginn on July 12. Later renamed the World Peace Foundation, it has as its stated purpose “educating the people of all nations to a full knowledge of the waste and destructiveness of war and of preparation for war, its evil effect on present social conditions and on the well-being of future generations, and to promote international justice and the brotherhood of man, and generally by every practical means to promote peace and good will among mankind.” On November 25, Andrew Carnegie donates $10 million to a fund to “hasten the abolition of international war, the foulest blot upon our civilization”; it is subsequently named the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
1914
Carnegie donates an additional $2 million in February to help establish the interfaith Church Peace Union.
1915
In January, the Woman’s Peace Party is founded in Washington, D.C., after a meeting organized by Jane Addams and Carrie Chapman Catt; it later becomes the American branch of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). In May, Jessie Wallace Hughan, Tracy Mygatt, and John Haynes Holmes form the Anti-Enlistment League, which urges “categorical, individual refusal to participate” in war. A group led by former president William Howard Taft establishes the League to Enforce Peace in July, at a meeting in Philadelphia; they propose a postwar League of Nations. The U.S. branch of the Fellowship of Reconciliation is founded in November. The Henry Ford Peace Expedition, including Ford and over one hundred delegates and reporters, sails for Europe aboard the Oscar II on December 4, hoping to establish a conference of neutral nations to implement peace proposals.
1916
Helen Keller gives speech at Carnegie Hall against American involvement in World War I.
Woodrow Wilson gives “Peace Without Victory” speech in the Senate in January, urging support for a League of Nations and collective security agreements. Fifty members of the House (including Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to that body) and six senators oppose a declaration of war on Germany, on April 6. The American Peace Society declares American entry into World War I unavoidable. Quakers form the American Friends Service Committee, which provides conscientious objectors with opportunities to perform “service of love in wartime,” including reconstruction and relief work in France. “It has been a bitter experience,” Randolph Bourne writes in June, “to see the unanimity with which the American intellectuals have thrown their support to the use of war-technique in the crisis in which America has found herself.” At Columbia University, President Nicholas Murray Butler (author of the 1913 book The International Mind: An Argument for Judicial Settlement of International Disputes) dismisses three antiwar faculty members; other colleges and universities fire professors for alleged disloyalty.
1918
Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs is convicted of sedition in September for a speech given in Canton, Ohio, on June 16, in which he had argued that “the people,” not “the ruling class,” should “decide the momentous issue of war or peace.”
1920
Woodrow Wilson is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to establish the League of Nations.
1921
John Dewey, Samuel Levinson, and others found the American Committee for the Outlawry of War. Frederick J. Libby organizes the National Council for the Prevention of War, which works for armaments reductions.
1923
Jessie Wallace Hughan organizes the secular-pacifist War Resisters League (WRL), a successor to the Anti-Enlistment League.
1927
Members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the American Friends Service Committee travel to Nicaragua to attempt to mediate a peace agreement between Nicaraguan rebels and U.S. occupation forces.
The movie All Quiet on the Western Front, released in August, depicts the brutal realities of trench warfare. Frank B. Kellogg is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the 1928 Briand-Kellogg Pact, an agreement to outlaw war.
1931
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Jane Addams, president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and Nicholas Murray Butler, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
1933
The National Peace Conference unites thirty-seven peace organizations in a loose federation. Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin found the Catholic Worker movement, establishing houses of hospitality for the needy and the Catholic Worker newspaper, which advocates for pacifist causes.
1934
Approximately 25,000 students join a National Student Strike Against War on April 13; a year later even more students participate. Richard B. Gregg’s The Power of Non-Violence, an explanation of Gandhian method and theory, is published.
1935
Jane Addams dies on May 21; in her honor, the Swarthmore College Peace Collection is established, gathering correspondence she had begun to donate some years before and the papers of other antiwar campaigners. Retired Marine Corps major general Smedley D. Butler publishes War Is a Racket in the wake of a national lecture tour on the same subject; the book is excerpted in Reader’s Digest. Various antiwar organizations join together in the Emergency Peace Campaign, which over the next two years organizes thousands of meetings, conferences, talks, and educational programs.
1936
Author Munro Leaf and illustrator Robert Lawson publish The Story of Ferdinand, a children’s book about a bull who doesn’t like bullfighting; it is widely received as a pacifist allegory. Merle Curti’s Peace or War: The American Struggle, 1636–1936 appears; it is the first scholarly account of the history of American peace movements.
1937
The Emergency Peace Campaign sponsors the No-Foreign-War Crusade, helping to pass the Neutrality Act, restricting American arms shipments to foreign belligerents, in May.
1939
James Thurber publishes an illustrated antiwar parable, The Last Flower.
1940
The America First Committee is established on September 4 to oppose intervention on the Allied side in World War 2; aviator Charles Lindbergh becomes its most prominent public speaker. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs the Selective Training and Service Act on September 16, requiring men aged 21–35 to register with local draft boards. The act allows those who object to war “by reason of religious training and belief” to perform “work of national importance under civilian direction.” Approximately 12,000 men accepted such nonmilitary service requirements in Civilian Public Service camps during World War II; over 6,000 objectors, refusing these terms, served prison time.
1941
Jeannette Rankin casts the only congressional vote against a declaration of war upon Japan, on December 8; “as a woman I can’t go to war,” she explains, “and I refuse to send anyone else.” The America First Committee urges support for the war; Jessie Wallace Hughan of the WRL writes, “the general public, in the opinion of our veteran pacifists, is much more nearly unanimous in support of the war than in 1917.” WILPF loses half of its membership; readership of the antiwar Catholic Worker plummets.
1942
The Fellowship of Reconciliation hosts an interracial study group in its Chicago offices that becomes the Congress of Racial Equality. Lew Ayres, star of the 1930 antiwar film All Quiet on the Western Front, claims conscientious objector status.
1943
Conscientious objectors in the Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury, Connecticut, begin a work strike to protest racial segregation in the prison dining hall, and are placed in solitary confinement; similar strikes are held in other institutions. The People’s Peace Now Committee, organized by David Dellinger, pickets in Washington, D.C., with about forty members.
The National Council Against Conscription holds its first meeting on December 13, in Philadelphia. Cordell Hull, a “father of the United Nations,” is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1946
Albert Einstein and a small group of scientists form the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, hoping to educate the public about the dangers of nuclear weapons. The Committee for Nonviolent Revolution is founded in February, mainly by wartime conscientious objectors, and plans a campaign of civil disobedience to oppose war and injustice. Emily Greene Balch and John Raleigh Mott are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the former for her leadership of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the latter for promoting Christian student peace organizations.
1947
On February 12, “Break with Conscription” demonstrators burn their draft cards in New York, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere in protests against plans to introduce a peacetime draft. The June issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists introduces the “Doomsday Clock,” representing “the level of continuous danger in which mankind lives in the nuclear age”; members of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board set the clock at seven minutes to midnight. The Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to the Religious Society of Friends, is accepted by the American Friends Service Committee and the Friends Service Council.
1948
After a conference in Chicago in July on “More Disciplined and Revolutionary Pacifist Activity,” the group Peacemakers is founded; its members include former members of the Committee for Nonviolent Revolution. Peacemakers campaigns against the imposition of a peacetime military draft. The first undergraduate peace studies program begins at Manchester College in North Manchester, Indiana, an institution associated with the Church of the Brethren.
1949
The General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, a panel of leading nuclear scientists, votes unanimously against a program to produce the H-bomb.
1950
Peacemakers, the Catholic Worker, the War Resisters League, and other groups organize a “Fast for Peace” during Easter. W.E.B. Du Bois founds the Peace Information Center in April; its newsletter the Peace-Gram promotes the abolition of nuclear weapons. Under pressure from the Justice Department, the group dissolves in October. Ralph Bunche is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating armistice agreements, in 1949, between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.
1955
On June 15, Dorothy Day leads a protest against New York City’s first annual air raid drill; she and fellow demonstrators refuse to take shelter and instead sit on park benches.
1956
David Dellinger, A. J. Muste, and Bayard Rustin edit Liberation magazine, the first issue of which is published in March.
1957
In June, the “Provisional Committee to Stop Nuclear Tests” is formed; later renamed the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), it grows to over 25,000 members and more than 100 local chapters by the following summer. The group Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons demonstrates at the Nevada Test Site on August 6, and holds a “Prayer and Conscience Vigil” in Washington, D.C., in November. Stanley Kubrick’s antiwar film Paths of Glory premieres.
1958
On January 15, Linus Pauling, a Nobel laureate in chemistry, presents the United Nations with a petition, signed by 9,235 scientists, opposing nuclear weapons testing; he publishes No More War! In May and June, Albert S. Bigelow and crew sail the Golden Rule from Honolulu in attempts to block nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands; they are arrested and towed back to port. Inspired by the Golden Rule, Earle Reynolds and his family then sail the Phoenix of Hiroshima well into the test zone before they too are arrested.
1959
Faculty at the University of Michigan, including economist Kenneth Boulding, establish the Center for Research on Conflict Resolution. The Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA) holds vigils and protests (the “Omaha Action”) outside Mead missile base in Nebraska to protest a new ICBM system; over a dozen are arrested for acts of civil disobedience, including A. J. Muste, who is imprisoned after he attempts to enter the base.
In May, SANE holds an antinuclear rally at Madison Square Garden in New York. Beginning in the summer, the CNVA stages the Polaris Action, hoping to board nuclear submarines near New London, Connecticut; swimmers reach three submarines and are arrested. On December 1, ten protesters affiliated with the CNVA begin a San Francisco to Moscow Peace Walk to promote disarmament. Joined by others and met with both counterprotests and supportive rallies along their route, they reach Moscow on October 3 of the following year.
1961
In his farewell address to the nation on January 17, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warns: “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military-industrial complex.” A small group of Boston physicians, concerned about the recent discovery of strontium-90 in children’s teeth (a result of atmospheric nuclear testing), begins meeting in March, and later organizes as Physicians for Social Responsibility; they publish “The Medical Consequences of Thermonuclear War” in The New England Journal of Medicine the following May, and in 1985 are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On November 1, the group Women Strike for Peace draws approximately 50,000 to protests across the country opposing atmospheric nuclear testing—protests credited with helping to bring about the Limited Test Ban Treaty, signed by President Kennedy in October 1963.
1962
CNVA organizes an interracial peace march from Nashville to Washington, D.C.; it begins in April.
1963
An interracial Quebec-Washington-Guantánamo Walk for Peace leaves Quebec in May. In October, Linus Pauling is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to arms control and disarmament. Arriving in Albany, Georgia, Quebec-Washington-Guantánamo marchers are arrested and imprisoned and begin a hunger strike. Gene Keyes of the CNVA burns his draft card outside the Champaign, Illinois, draft board on December 24, and is later sentenced to three years in prison for refusing induction.
1964
The Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, released on January 29, satirizes the absurdities of nuclear weapons and the Cold War arms race. The Catholic Peace Fellowship is established in the spring. On May 2, the first major student protests against the Vietnam War are held in cities across the country. The Quebec-Washington-Guantánamo peace march is ended on October 27, after the Coast Guard impounds the motorboat carrying the remaining participants from Miami to Havana. Martin Luther King Jr. is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1965
A “teach-in” against the Vietnam War, the first of many, is held at the University of Michigan on March 24–25. On April 17, an antiwar march in Washington, D.C. draws approximately 25,000; some 30,000 participate in a Berkeley teach-in in May. In August, Life magazine includes a photograph of Catholic Worker Chris Kearns burning his draft card; Congress rapidly makes the burning or mutilation of draft cards a criminal offense. David Miller of the Catholic Worker is the first to be arrested under the new law, during a demonstration in New York on October 15. Quaker pacifist Norman Morrison burns himself to death outside the Pentagon to protest the war on November 2. A March on Washington for Peace in Vietnam on November 27 attracts 15,000–25,000 participants.
1966
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee issues a statement opposing U.S. involvement in Vietnam on January 6. Three Army privates—the Fort Hood Three—refuse to go to Vietnam, calling the war “illegal and immoral,” and in September they are court-martialed. The Congress of Racial Equality calls for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. Protests against Dow Chemical, manufacturer of napalm, are held in Berkeley and Detroit in October and spread to other cities over the succeeding year.
1967
Martin Luther King Jr. leads an antiwar march in Chicago on March 25; on April 4, in a speech at Riverside Church in New York City, he announces and explains his opposition to the war. On April 15, approximately 400,000 march in New York as part of the Spring Mobilization to End the War, and 100,000 in San Francisco. In June, a group of six Vietnam veterans founds Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the armed services and is stripped of his heavyweight title; “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong,” he explains. Thousands burn draft cards during “Stop the Draft Week” in October. The March on the Pentagon, on October 21, draws nearly 100,000 to Washington, D.C., to oppose the war. Over 500 sign the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest, pledging to withhold that share of their taxes being used to finance the war in Vietnam. Senator Eugene McCarthy announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination, on an antiwar platform, on November 30.
1968
On January 15, some 5,000 women led by Jeannette Rankin march on Washington as the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, and present a peace petition to the Speaker of the House. Three days later, singer Eartha Kitt confronts Lady Bird Johnson over the war at a White House women’s luncheon on crime issues: “You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed . . . [t]hey don’t want to go to school because they’re going to be snatched from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam.” On May 17, nine Catholic activists burn registration forms at the Catonsville, Maryland, draft board.
1969
The October 15 Vietnam Moratorium draws millions of protesters throughout the world; a March on Washington, on November 15, is attended by 500,000. On December 20, the National Chicano Moratorium Committee stages its first demonstration against the Vietnam War, in East Los Angeles.
1970
During protests against the invasion of Cambodia at Kent State University on May 4, four students are killed and nine wounded by members of the Ohio National Guard. A Chicano Moratorium demonstration against the Vietnam War on August 29, in East Los Angeles, draws approximately 20,000–30,000 marchers.
1971
In late January and early February, Vietnam Veterans Against the War gathers testimony about alleged U.S. war crimes in the Winter Soldier Investigation. Veteran John Kerry testifies before the Senate on April 22. The film Johnny Got His Gun, based on Dalton Trumbo’s 1939 novel, is released in May. Twenty-eight activists destroy draft records in a Camden, New Jersey, draft office on August 21; all of the “Camden 28” are later acquitted. Activists based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, begin a campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, which would enable conscientious objectors to war to pay taxes into a fund used only for nonmilitary spending. The Center for Defense Information is founded by former military officers, including Rear Admiral Gene La Rocque.
1972
Ron Kovic and two other paraplegic veterans disrupt Richard Nixon’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Miami on August 23, and are ejected from the hall.
1976
The Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice begins in Ukiah, California, on January 23; some seven hundred participants arrive at the Pentagon on October 18.
1977
On his first day in office, President Carter grants unconditional pardons to those who had evaded the draft during the Vietnam War.
1980
In April, disarmament researcher Randall Forsberg issues “A Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race,” providing a rallying point for the nuclear freeze movement. On September 9, the “Ploughshares 8” break into a General Electric plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania; they hammer the nose cones of two warheads, pour blood on documents, and pray for peace. Nearly two thousand gather in Washington for the Women’s Pentagon Action on November 16–17.
1982
On June 12, between 750,000 and 1,000,000 people march from the United Nations to Central Park in New York in support of nuclear disarmament.
1983
Richard P. Turco coins the phrase “nuclear winter” to describe the environmental consequences of nuclear war, and along with Owen Toon, Thomas P. Ackerman, James B. Pollack, and Carl Sagan (the TTAPS group), publishes papers on the subject in Science and other journals. The Day After, a television film dramatizing a U.S.-Soviet nuclear war and its aftereffects, airs on November 20 and is viewed by over 100 million people.
Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel) publishes an antiwar children’s book, The Butter Battle Book, in January. The United States Institute of Peace is established in October by act of Congress; it seeks “to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict around the world.”
1986
Approximately 1,200 people leave Los Angeles on March 1 as part of the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament; marchers arrive in Washington, D.C., on November 14.
1987
A three-day Mobilization for Peace and Justice in Central America and Southern Africa in Washington, D.C., blocks entrances to the headquarters of the CIA in McLean; 600 are arrested.
1988
During a weeklong protest outside the Nevada Nuclear Test Site coordinated by Freeze/SANE, 1,200 are arrested on March 12, and hundreds more on subsequent days.
1989
In March, the IRS seizes the Colrain, Massachusetts, home of war tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner; supporters from across the country subsequently occupy the property after Kehler and Corner are arrested.
1991
The Coalition Against a Vietnam War in the Middle East and the National Campaign Against the War in the Middle East organize demonstrations against the Gulf War in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., on January 19 and 26. The National Student and Youth Campaign for Peace in the Middle East coordinates an International Day of Student Action, on February 21.
1997
Jody Williams, founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, receives the Nobel Peace Prize.
2001
On September 14, Barbara Lee, a Democratic congresswoman from California, is the only member in either the House or Senate to vote against a post-9/11 resolution authorizing the use of force: “I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States.” A peace demonstration in New York on October 7 draws 10,000.
Antiwar survivors of the 9/11 attacks and families of the victims form the group September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows on February 14. A march on Washington on April 20, organized by the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, sees a turnout of nearly 100,000. Thousands gather in New York’s Central Park on October 7 to oppose a U.S. invasion of Iraq. One hundred and thirty-three members of the House and twenty-three senators vote against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, on October 10–11. Jimmy Carter is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” Hundreds of thousands march in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco on October 26. A group of about one hundred women organizes as Code Pink, and begins a four-month antiwar vigil in front of the White House on November 17.
2003
First Lady Laura Bush cancels a White House poetry symposium after invitees plan to read protest poems; Sam Hamill organizes a February 12 “Day of Poetry Against the War.” Rallies across the country on February 15, coordinated with hundreds of others across the globe, oppose the invasion of Iraq (the event is claimed as the largest mass demonstration in human history). Over 1,000 are arrested in San Francisco on March 20 after the bombing of Baghdad.
2004
The group Iraq Veterans Against the War is founded in July.
2005
Cindy Sheehan, mother of Casey Sheehan, a soldier killed in Iraq, stages protests in August at “Camp Casey,” near the Crawford, Texas, ranch of President George W. Bush. Hundreds of thousands march in Washington, D.C., on September 24, calling for an end to the war.
2006
Protesters in Port Olympia, Washington, attempt to block a shipment of combat vehicles bound for Iraq on May 24.
2007
Iraq Veterans Against the War set up “Camp Resistance” in support of resister Ehren Wahada on January 4. Approximately 150 people are arrested on September 15 during antiwar protests near the Capitol.
2009
Barack Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
2010
Beginning in January, Specialist Bradley Manning, an intelligence analyst stationed near Baghdad, downloads classified and sensitive documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; hoping to reveal “the true nature of 21st century asymmetric warfare” and “the true cost of war,” he releases the documents through WikiLeaks. Now Chelsea Manning, she is serving a thirty-five-year sentence for espionage.