Edwards was born June 10, 1953; his number was 178.
Edwards was born on June 10, 1953. That put him in the Vietnam draft lottery of Feb. 2, 1972, when Edwards was a sophomore at North Carolina State University. (Like a great many college students, he opposed the war.) The lottery ranked individuals according to their birth date; Edwards drew 178, which was reasonably "good," i.e., high, reducing the likelihood he would be called up. (The highest number called during the previous year had been 95.) In any event, Edwards' lottery number didn't even matter, because nobody in the 1972 lottery was ever called up. The war was winding down and draft resistance had become an enormous headache for the Pentagon. In 1973, it scotched the draft altogether and instituted the All Volunteer Army. Unimpeded by any Vietnam-related moral or legal dilemmas, Edwards graduated from North Carolina State in the spring of 1974 and enrolled at the University of North Carolina Law School in the fall.
Did you find out what the specifics of the draft policy was at that time? ...just curious.