Francis Lieber

Dr. Francis Lieber (March 18, 1798 – October 2, 1872), originally known as Franz Lieber, was a German-American jurist and political philosopher. The year of his birth has been debated because he lied about his age to enlist in the Prussian army. He was the first American to take the title of political scientist, he is most widely known as the author of the Lieber Code during the American Civil War, also known as Code for the Government of Armies in the Field (1863), which laid the foundation for conventions governing the conduct of troops during wartime.

Biography
Lieber was born in Berlin, the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. While still in Germany, Lieber joined the Colberg Regiment of the Prussian Army in 1815 during the Napoleonic Wars, and was wounded during the Battle of Waterloo.

Education in Germany
Francis did not receive anything like a normal gentleman's education. Returning to Berlin after the Napoleonic wars (post 1815), Francis studied hard to pass the entrance exams to the University of Berlin. But being denied admission because of his nationalistic activities, which opposed the Prussian monarchy, he was denied admission. Moving to Jena he matriculated in 1820 to the University of Jena and within a span of four months finished writing a dissertation in the field of mathematics. As the authorities caught up with him he left Jena for Dresden to study topography with Major Decker. His studies in Dresden were very brief for as soon as the Greek Revolution of 1821 broke out he volunteered his services.

European activities
He fought briefly in the Greek War of Independence, and then spent one year, 1822–1823, in Rome in the family of the historian Niebuhr, then Prussian ambassador, as tutor to his son. While there, he wrote on his sojourn in Greece. The result was published in Leipzig in 1823 and also in Amsterdam under the title The German Anacharsis. He returned to Germany on a royal pardon, but was soon imprisoned once again, this time at Köpenick. There he wrote a collection of poems entitled Wein- und Wonne-Lieder (Songs of wine and bliss), which on his release, through the influence of Niebuhr, were published in Berlin in 1824 under the pen name of “Franz Arnold.” He fled to England in 1825, and supported himself for a year in London, giving lessons and contributing to German periodicals. He also wrote a tract on the Lancasterian system of instruction. Then he was invited to establish a gymnasium in the United States and became a member of Boston society.

American educator and writer
Lieber moved to Boston in 1827, where he became a founder and editor of the Encyclopaedia Americana, after conceiving of the idea of translating the Brockhaus encyclopedia into English. At this time, he also made translations of a French work on the revolution of July, 1830, and of Feuerbach's life of Kaspar Hauser. He was also a confident to Alexis de Tocqueville on the customs of the American people.

Lieber and Charles Follen, believing thoroughly in the importance of training the body along with the mind, were the first to introduce gymnastic training in Boston. Lieber's Boston swimming school of 1827, also a new departure in the educational field, became such a feature that John Quincy Adams, then President of the United States, went to see it.

In 1832, he received a commission from the trustees of the newly founded Girard College to form a plan of education. He resided in Philadelphia from 1833 until 1835.

Then he became a professor of history and political economics at South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina), where he remained until 1856. During his 20 years at the College, he produced some of his most important works. Such writers and jurists as Wittermaier, Johann Kaspar Bluntschli, Édouard René de Laboulaye, Joseph Story and James Kent, recognized in him a kindred mind. The spirit of Lieber's work is indicated in his favorite motto, Nullum jus sine officio, nullum officium sine jure (“No right without its duties, no duty without its rights”).

From 1856 until 1865, he was professor of political economy at Columbia University (then Columbia College). In 1860, he also became professor of political science in the law school, which post he held until his death. His inaugural address as professor at Columbia, on “Individualism; and Socialism, or Communism,” was published by the college.

Civil War activities
Lieber sided with the North during the American Civil War, even though he had been a resident of South Carolina. As early as 1851, he delivered an address in South Carolina warning the southern states against secession. One of his sons, geologist Oscar Montgomery Lieber (see below), joined the Confederate army and died at the Battle of Williamsburg. During the conflict, he served as the head of the Loyal Publication Society of New York, compiling news articles for dissemination among Union troops and Northern newspapers. More than one hundred pamphlets were issued by it under his supervision, of which ten were by himself. He also assisted the Union War Department and President Abraham Lincoln in drafting legal guidelines for the Union army, the most famous being General Orders Number 100, or the "Lieber Code" as it is commonly known. The Lieber Code would be adopted by other military organizations and go on to form the basis of the first laws of war.

Preserving Confederate documents
After the Civil War, Lieber was given the task of accumulating and preserving the records of the former government of the Confederate States of America. While working in this capacity, Lieber was one of the last known people to possess the infamous Dahlgren Affair papers. Shortly after obtaining them, Lieber was ordered to give them to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who likely disposed of them, as they have not been seen since.

Diplomacy
From 1870 until his death in New York City, Lieber served as a diplomatic negotiator between the United States and Mexico.

Family
His son Oscar Montgomery Lieber (8 September 1830 Boston - 27 June 1862 Richmond, Virginia) was a geologist, educated at Berlin, Göttingen, and Freiburg. He was state geologist of Mississippi from 1850 to 1851, engaged in the geological survey of Alabama from 1854 to 1855, and from 1856 until 1860 held the office of mineralogical, geological, and agricultural surveyor of South Carolina. His first annual report of the last-mentioned survey was published in 1857, and the fourth and last in 1860.

In 1860 he accompanied the American astronomical expedition to Labrador as geologist. At the beginning of the civil war he joined the Confederate army, and died of wounds that he received in the Battle of Williamsburg.

He was the author of The Assayer's Guide (Philadelphia, 1862), The Analytical Chemist's Assistant, translated from the German of Friedrich Wöhler's Beispiele zur Uebung in der analytischen Chemie, with an introduction (1852), and various articles on mining in New York Mining Magazine.

Lieber's son Hamilton Lieber (7 June 1835 Philadelphia - 18 October 1876 Baden-Baden) entered the volunteer army at the beginning of the civil war as 1st lieutenant, 9th Illinois Regiment, and was badly wounded at Fort Donelson. Afterward he was appointed a captain in the veteran reserve corps, and served during the draft riots in New York City in 1863. In 1866 he was made a captain and military storekeeper in the regular army, and was retired on account of disabilities contracted in the line of duty.

Lieber's son Guido Norman Lieber (b. 21 May 1837 Columbia, South Carolina) was graduated at the University of South Carolina in 1856, and at Harvard Law School in 1859, and in that year was admitted to the bar of New York. At the beginning of the Civil War he became 1st lieutenant in the 11th infantry, U. S. Army, and was appointed regimental adjutant, and served during the peninsular campaign under George B. McClellan, being brevetted captain for gallantry at the Battle of Gaines' Mill, 27 June 1862. He was with his regiment at the Second Battle of Bull Run, being then appointed aide-de-camp to the general-in-chief. In 1862 he was appointed major and judge advocate, and he served in this capacity in the Department of the Gulf, being present in the Teche and Red River campaigns. For gallantry during the latter he received another brevet, and he was brevetted a third time for services during the war. He also served as adjutant general of the department, and as judge of the provost court in New Orleans.

He was then transferred to the judge advocate general's office in Washington, and subsequently appointed assistant to his father in the Bureau of Confederate Archives. He afterward served as judge advocate of various military departments and divisions, being, when stationed in New York, one of the founders of the Military service institution. He was professor of law at the U. S. Military Academy from 1878 until 1882, when he was assigned to duty in Washington in the Bureau of Military Justice. In 1884 he was appointed assistant judge advocate general, with the rank of colonel, and was on duty as acting judge advocate general of the U.S. Army. In 1895, he was promoted to brigadier general and served as Judge Advocate General until 1901, in which capacity he was one of the most valuable advisers of President William McKinley during the Spanish-American War. His publications include several important treatises on the laws of war, such as The Use of the Army in Aid of the Civil Power (1898), and Remarks on the Army Regulations (1898).

Works

 * Notes on the Fallacies of American Protectionists
 * Encyclopaedia Americana (Editor, 1829–1851)
 * The Stranger in America in 2 volumes (1833–35)
 * Reminiscences of Niebuhr (1835)
 * A Manual of Political Ethics (1838)
 * Legal and Political Hermeneuties, or Principles of Interpretation and Construction in Law and Politics (1838)
 * Translation of Dictionary of Latin Synonymes by Lewis Ramshorn (1839)
 * Laws of Property: Essays on Property and Labor (1841)
 * Great events: described by distinguished historians, chroniclers, and other writers (1847)
 * Translation of Penitentiary System in the United States by Alexis de Tocqueville (1848)
 * The West and Other Poems (1848)
 * On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853).
 * Guerrilla Parties Considered with Reference to the Laws and Usages of War, [1862]
 * General Order No. 100 aka the Lieber Code (1863)
 * Reflections on the changes which may seem necessary in the present constitution of the state of New York (1867)
 * Memorial relative to the Verdict of Jurors (1867)
 * The Unanimity of Juries (1867)
 * International Copyright and Fragments of Political Science, or Nationalism and Internationalism (1868)