Nonviolence is a principle that rejects violence as un-conscionable and may reject all forms of coercion. Belief in nonviolence is deeply rooted in American history, from the pacifism of the Quakers and Anabaptists to the nonresistance of the clergyman Adin Ballou, the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and others. These Americans inspired the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, who advocated social reform, and the Indian nationalist and spiritual leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, whose example reinvigorated American nonviolence in the twentieth century. An adherence to nonviolence took shape among those who read William James on the "moral equivalent of war," supported Jane Addams's efforts to resolve domestic class conflict and international warfare, and were provoked by Randolph Bourne's critique of American mobilization in World War I.

In 1915 three organizations professing nonviolence were formed: Protestant pacifists organized the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR); Jane Addams and other progressives founded the Women's Peace Party...