National Council Against Conscription Records

The National Council Against Conscription (NCAC), an outgrowth of the National Council Against Peacetime Conscription Now (which was founded in 1945 and merged into the Nation Council Against Conscription), had its first official meeting on December 13, 1945 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mordecai Johnson was elected as the first chairman pro tem, and Walter Sikes as secretary. In February 1946, Carlyle Adams was approved as Director and Sikes as Associate Director, with headquarters in the Witherspoon Building in Philadelphia. In April 1946, Adams resigned, and Sikes was appointed Interim Director. In June 1946, Sikes resigned; in December 1946, John Swomley Jr. became the Acting Director, and was appointed the Director in October 1947 and stayed in that position until the Nation Council Against Conscription disbanded in December 1959. Members of the Administrative Committee (i.e., Board of Directors) included Alonzo Myers, George Buttrick, Francis McGuire, Elsie Elfenbein, Ray Newton, Mildred Scott Olmsted, Denis Cardinal Dougherty, and Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick.

Swomley was the editor of Conscription News, which was begun in November 1944 while he was still working for the Fellowship of Reconciliation; when he became the director of the Nation Council Against Conscription in 1947, it took over the sponsorship of the newsletter. The newsletter ceased being published in December 1959 when the Nation Council Against Conscription disbanded.

The Nation Council Against Conscription worked to defeat various legislative measures which promoted universal military training and peacetime conscription, by lobbying Congress, public speaking, publishing detailed analyses of proposed legislation, corresponding with magazine and newspaper editors about their coverage of Universal Military Training, and producing literature on the subject. It also worked on related issues such as international cooperation, disarmament, conscription, militarism, disarmament, racism, the United Nations, and prevention of war.

Correspondents include Frank Aydelotte, Bruce Barton, Charles F. Boss Jr., Louis Bromfield, Henry J. Cadbury, Roscoe S. Conkling, John Dewey, Albert Einstein, Harry Emerson Fosdick, John Haynes Holmes, Ray Newton, Richard W. Reuter, Eleanor Roosevelt, John M. Swomley, and E. Paul Weaver.