TLS signed “Bill,” one page both sides of an integral air mail envelope, 5.75 x 12.5, no date, but postmarked May 20, 1970. Letter to Sharon Caudle. In part: “Your letter arrived today, shaming me into an immediate response. I just reread your last letter and felt appropriately bad about not writing in so long. I got to come back to Oxford because I was temporarily deferred. When I returned I lost the deferment and now am back in the pool with a high lottery number but still a good chance of being called. It’s all up in the air. Working on a grad degree called a B. Phil. which probably fits somewhere between a M.A. and a PhD. in U.S. terms. The degree usually takes two years to get but I’ll have to do another year if I want to finish due to complications the draft induced last year. Now I’m trying to decide whether to stay here for another year and take the degree or leave this June for good and accept the offer that Yale law School made of a place partial scholarship, and loan to cover expenses. Meanwhile I’m doing essays in political theory, wishing I’d studied harder in Allers’ class long years ago.
Kit is loving the Marines, far too much perhaps. I got a couple of scary letters from him a few weeks ago, but last week he wrote me the nicest, most conciliatory letter that renewed my faith in our friendship, his judgement, and the possibility of middle America’s avoiding travesties like Vietnam in the future. Jim Moore thought for a long time that he wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam, which would I think have squared with his political opinions, but he found out last week that he’s being sent abroad in August. Pretty sad. Tom Campbell, unforgivably, hasn’t written since the first of the year, so I assume he’s fine...I regret to say that I’m going home this summer and therefore probably won’t be able to get together with you…I’m up to my ears in work and haven’t the money to fly to Paris or some other place for a day or two to see you…I guess there’s no way you could come over here for a day or a weekend?…Sorry I’m offering no better deal. I just can’t right now. At least you must call me.” In very good condition, with scattered creases and wrinkles, a few minor spots of ink erosion, and scattered toning and soiling.
Just weeks after the tragic shootings at Kent State, the 23-year-old Bill Clinton found himself hanging in draft limbo, the fear of being sent to Vietnam looming heavily over him: “When I returned I lost the deferment and now am back in the pool with a high lottery number but still a good chance of being called. It’s all up in the air.” Openly condemning Vietnam through active participation in campus protests at Oxford, Clinton voiced concern for those friends who saw the controversial war through a different lense: “Kit is loving the Marines, far too much perhaps. I got a couple of scary letters from him a few weeks ago, but last week he wrote me the nicest, most conciliatory letter that renewed my faith in our friendship, his judgment, and the possibility of middle America’s avoiding travesties like Vietnam in the future.” In the years to follow, the presidential hopeful would withstand ridicule for not serving in the war, and during the first year of his first term, the Somalia conflict would bring him back to those impassioned days of his youth. Now, it was Clinton’s turn to make the decision, and he made his agenda clear in the October 1993 Address:‘Our mission from this day forward is to increase our strength, do our job, bring our soldiers out and bring them home.’ This rare letter offers bold, steadfast sentiments from the young president who never changed his views on the value of human life. Pre-certified PSA/DNA and RR Auction COA.
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