On April 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson, recently sworn into a second term of office for which he had run behind the slogan "He Kept Us Out of War," appeared between a joint session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war against Imperial Germany. Congress readily obliged the President's request, voting to declare war on Germany by a margin of 373-50 in the House and 82-6 in the Senate. This decision of the United States government to enter World War I was backed up with additional legislation imposing military conscription in America to staff the nation's wartime Army and Navy. On May 18, 1917, a draft bill became law. The bill called for all eligible young men nationwide to register for the draft on a single day — June 5, 1917. While isolated hotspots of anti-conscription activity sprang up in some urban centers, the registration process was generally an orderly affair, with the vast majority of young American men accepting their fate with what has been characterized as "a calm resignation." On July 20, 1917, a blindfolded Newton D. Baker, the Wilson administration's Secretary of War, drew numbers choosing certain registered young men for mandatory military service. Opponents of American participation in the war continued their efforts to change the country's course, holding meetings and distributing pamphlets. Among the leading organized forces in opposition to conscription and the war was the Socialist Party of America, which at its April 1917 National Convention had declared its "unalterable opposition" to the war and urged the workers of the world to "refuse support to the governments in their wars."

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