Background and Education
Bolton was born in Baltimore, Maryland. The son of a fireman, he grew up in the working-class neighborhood of Yale Heights and won a scholarship to the McDonogh School in Owings Mills, Maryland, graduating in 1966. He also ran the school's Students For Goldwater campaign in 1964. He then attended Yale University, where he shared classes with his friend Clarence Thomas, and was a contemporary of Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham at Yale Law School. He was a member of the Yale Political Union, and he ultimately earned a B.A. summa cum laude in 1970 and a J.D. in 1974. Bolton supported the Vietnam War and enlisted in the Maryland Army National Guard, but did not serve in Vietnam. He wrote in his Yale 25th reunion book "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy. I considered the war in Vietnam already lost." In an interview, Bolton discussed his comment in the reunion book, explaining that he decided to avoid service in Vietnam because "by the time I was about to graduate in 1970, it was clear to me that opponents of the Vietnam War had made it certain we could not prevail, and that I had no great interest in going there to have Teddy Kennedy give it back to the people I might die to take it away from."
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