[4] In February 1917, Baldwin wrote to the national office of the organization, urging it to hold mass meetings in opposition to American participation in the war, an eventuality which seemed imminent.
[4] With Crystal Eastman in ill health, the national office responded, in March, with a telegram signed by a number of liberal and radical worthies asking Baldwin once again to head the organization.
[4] Lillian Wald resigned from the AUAM in August 1917, along with other moderates, over the decision by Baldwin, Eastman, and others in the organization to send delegates to a Minneapolis convention of the People's Council of America for Democracy and Peace in September.
[citation needed] Particularly in its early years, the AUAM was a broadly constituted organization, including religious pacifists, socialists, and liberals, united in a distaste for war and militarism and a commitment to the maintenance of civil liberties.
[8] The organization placed a strong emphasis on lobbying, sending Baldwin to Washington, DC regularly in an attempt to win elected officials to the ideas of the American Union.