The debate over both amnesty and how that issue related to the morality of the war in Vietnam is the focus of the following lesson.Īmnesty was ultimately tackled by Presidents Gerald R. In April 1973, Senator Edward Kennedy wrote a letter discussing the need to care for those who served in Southeast Asia and to forgive those who "refused induction" for moral reasons so "that the nation can turn its attention to reconciliation and healing the wounds and bitterness created by this long and costly conflict."Īlthough the question of amnesty occupies more than half of the letter, Kennedy made it clear that caring for America’s servicemen was his top priority. The American public had become polarized in a way that it had not been since the Civil War. Americans faced the daunting task of reuniting their own country torn apart by participation in a politically divisive and brutal conflict halfway around the world. In January 1973, the Paris Peace Accords officially ended US involvement in the Vietnam War, although the majority of US troops would not leave until August of that year and the fighting between North and South Vietnam would continue until the fall of Saigon in 1975. The virtual omission of draft resistance from the historical accounts of the Vietnam War is a manifestation of the period’s nagging effect on American culture and memory. Most people in fact do make a distinction between draft evasion and draft resistance. While the literature on the Vietnam War is voluminous, the issue of draft resistance has either been overlooked or misunderstood by historians. Vietnam was "America’s longest war." While US operations tended to be very limited between 19, escalation in the early months of 1965 eventually led to the deployment of more than 2.5 million military personnel to South Vietnam through 1973. Through this step-by-step process, students will acquire the skills to analyze any primary or secondary source material. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based units.
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