So then what? Lex Anteinternet: December 1, 1969. The United States resumes a lottery system for conscription.

Last week we published this item:

Lex Anteinternet: December 1, 1969. The United States resumes a lott...:

In that, we noted the following:

The resumption of a lottery system for the draft, in which each registrant was assigned a number and the number then drawn at random, was designed to attempt to reduce the unpopularity of conscription at that point in the Vietnam War.  Numerous changes were made to the system during the war including ending a marriage exemption and ultimately curtaining an exemption for graduate students. With the adoption of the lottery system also came a change in age focus so that rather than top of those in the age range being drafted it then focused on those who were 19 years old. The reason for this was that if a person's number wasn't chosen in the lottery as a 19 year old, they were not going to be drafted and could accordingly plan around that.

So, as noted, the concept was that the lottery would reduce resistance to the draft.

So, did it?

In fact, it did remarkably, and not only that, protests of the Vietnam War dropped off on college campuses remarkably in 1970.

Now, not completely.  Indeed, one of the absolute worst events associated with the era of college war protests, the shooting at Kent State, would come in 1970.  But there was a marked reduction.

Indeed, university faculty, which had evolved from a sort of genteel conservatism early in the 20th Century into an increasingly liberal faculty over the years, was both surprised and disappointed as they'd come to believe that the core of the opposition was social concern, rather than personal concern.  It turned out that at least the evidence was the opposite.

So, what generally occurred with the lottery is that a large number of men knew after a lottery call that they were never going to be drafted and they accordingly planned conventionally.  Another group knew for sure it had been drafted and planned for that. A number in the middle felt their chances of being drafted were likely, reviewed the deferments they might be qualified for, with quite a few heading for Reserve component recruiters or the ROTC building.

The opposition to the war certainly didn't end.  But the heat had been taken out of the issue to a surprising degree.