Francis Lieber to Senator Chares Sumner, April 10, 1863

New York, April 10,1863.

. . . I do not think that your remarks concerning foreign ministers having intercourse with the opposition apply to the case of Lord Lyons. Would or would not the premier of England have sent word to a monarch that his minister was no longer agreeable to his majesty, if this minister in London, a century ago, had held covert intercourse with Scottish sympathizers or adherents of the Stuarts? I believe that a minister must be very circumspect in his intercourse with the opposition, — as opposition, and in excited times. Depend upon it, Pitt would not have allowed a foreign minister to be closeted with Fox and Sheridan, discussing high politics of England, without making complaint. I give you an anecdote which will be interesting to the chairman of Foreign Affairs. President King tells me that when his father, Rufus King, was American Minister in London, he paid a visit to Paris after the Peace of Amiens, when Fox likewise went. Fox went to see Consul Bonaparte. The latter desired that King would have himself presented, or the chief officers of the consul told King that they would gladly present him. King, who was then engaged in making a treaty with England, declined, because he knew that Bonaparte was very disagreeable to George III., and he thought he had no right to do anything that could interfere with his relation to the British court or ministry. When he returned to England and went to court, George III. went up to him and said: “Mr. King, I am very much obliged to you; you have treated me like a gentleman, which is more than I can say of all my subjects.” I give the words exactly as President King gave them to me, and he says that he gave the words to me as exactly as he could remember them, the anecdote being in lively remembrance in the family. He thinks he can now repeat the very words in which his father told the affair immediately after his return from court, and that they are the ipsissima verba of George III.

My belief is that, had we to consider nothing but diplomatic propriety, Lord Lyons's case is one which not only would authorize the President, but ought to cause him to declare to the Queen of England that Lord Lyons “was no longer agreeable to the American Government.” This occurrence belongs to the large class of facts which show, and have shown for the last two hundred and fifty years, that monarchies always treat republics as incomplete governments, unless guns and bayonets and commercial advantages prevent them from doing so. You remember the Netherlands? Lord Palmerston would not have spoken of a puny kingkin as he did of us in the recent Alabama discussion. Do you believe that the course of England toward us at present would have been anything like what it has been, and continues to be, had we had a monarch, though there had been an Anne or a Louis XV, or a Philip on our throne? Unfortunately, I must add that it is a psychological phenomenon which is not restricted to monarchists. The insolence of the South would have presented itself as rank rebellion to the grossest mind, had we had a monarch, or a president for life. Man is a very coarse creature. I can never forget that I found in Crabbe's “Dictionary of Synonyms,” that “properly speaking rebellion cannot be committed in republics, because there is no monarch to rebel against.” What does my senator and publicist think of this? A girl, “not of an age at which any respectable millinery establishment would be intrusted to her,”as Lord Brougham expressed it, is a more striking name, figure, sign, to swear allegiance to, than a country, a constitution, and their history, or the great continuous society to which men belong, let them be ever so old or glorious. Five hundred years hence it may be somewhat different. For the present, it is true that, could you extinguish the whole royal family in England, but keep the nation ignorant of the fact, and rule England by a ministry and parliament in the name of Peter or John, Bull would be far warmer in his allegiance than he would prove to the State, or Old England, or Great Britain. Observe how degrading for our species the beggarly appointment of a king of Greece is, — a Danish collateral prince! Our race worships as yet the Daimio as much as the Japanese do. Though a perfect Roi fainéant, it is a Roi, — an entity, a thing, and therefore better than an idea, however noble,— gross creatures that we are! . . .

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 331-3

Congressman Horace Binney to Francis Lieber, February 8, 1860

Philada., Feb. 8, 1860.

. . . The safer principle to adopt in regard to the Dred Scott case, I think, is, that when the Constitution has been interpreted on a contested point, by the Supreme Court, and that interpretation practically followed for more than half a century, no contrary decision by the same court can have the least authority whatever. This is the specific rule that I would apply.

There is no Constitution without it. If the Dred Scott case is followed, we have no unchanging Constitution whatever. It will be “alia lex Romœ, alia Athenis, alia nunc, alia posthac.” Cicero had no notion of such a law.

They talk of overruling the former decisions and practice. Whoever heard of such a thing being done by the same tribunal? How can it overrule its own body, confirmed by the decisions of Presidents over and over again, and by the laws of the Representatives of the people? The judges have done an awful thing, as I have already told you; and my word for it, it will not stand one moment if this government stands. You know how the Amphictyonic Council fell when it went into politics and decided corruptly between Sparta and Thebes. So it will be here, unless the Dred Scott case is brushed away. . . .

SOURCE: Charles Chauncey Binney, The Life of Horace Binney: With Selections from His Letters, p. 296-7

Francis Lieber to Major-General Henry W. Halleck, February 20, 1863

New York, February 20, 1863.

My Dear General, — Here is the projet of the code I was charged with drawing up.¹ I am going to send fifty copies to General Hitchcock for distribution, and I earnestly ask for suggestions and amendments. I am going to send for that purpose a copy to General Scott, and another to Hon. Horace Binney. For two or three paragraphs you will observe we should want the assistance of Congress. That is now too late; but I suggest to you to decide with the Secretary of War whether it would be advisable and feasible to send the Code even now, and as it is, to our generals, to be a guide on some difficult and important points. I observe from some orders of General Rosecrans that he has used my pamphlet on “Guerilla Warfare,” unless there be a remarkable spontaneous coincidence.  . . . I do not believe that it will be possible to change for the present war, or at least immediately, the usage which has grown up regarding parolling privates, but you will agree with me that the law, as I have laid it down, is the law and usage. As parolling is now handled by us, it amounts to a premium on cowardice, e. g. in the affair of Harper's Ferry.  . . . You are one of those from whom I most desire suggestions, because you will read the Code as lawyer and as commander. Even your general opinion of the whole is important to me. I have earnestly endeavored to treat of these grave topics conscientiously end comprehensively; and you, well read in the literature on this branch of international law, know that nothing of the kind exists in any language. I had no guide, no groundwork, no text-book. I can assure you, as a friend, that no counsellor of Justinian sat down to his task of the Digest with a deeper feeling of the gravity of his labor, than filled my breast in the laying down for the first time such a code, where nearly everything was floating. Usage, history, reason, and conscientiousness, a sincere love of truth, justice, and civilization, have been my guides; but of course the whole must be still very imperfect.  . . . Ought I to add anything on a belligerent's using, in battle, the colors and uniform of his opponent? I believe when this has been done no quarter has been given. I have said nothing on rebellion and invasion of our country with reference to the treatment of our own citizens by the commanding general. I have three paragraphs on this subject, but it does not fall within the limits, as indicated in the special order appointing our board. . . .

_______________

¹ This refers to the pamphlet entitled “Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field,” published by the War Department, in April, 1863, as General Orders, No. 100.

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 330-1

Francis Lieber to Senator Charles Sumner, January 8, 1863

New York, January 8,1863.

My Dear Sumner, — This will be, indeed, a trial of your temper. If you have not smitten me in your heart, you are a good, kind-hearted fellow. I am just now excessively busy with a number of widely different subjects. You know how this rags the mind. Excuse me; it is all I can say for the past, and for the additional request, which I fear you will call impudent, — to try to get a copy of Mr. Read's MS. for me. Would the author give me one, if applied to? You ask me what I think of it. I will simply state what I still think of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus in our country, and at the present juncture.

First. The analogy between the crown of England and our Executive, regarding the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, does not exist and never existed.

Second. Although there exists in England a division of powers, and clearly has existed there earlier than in any other country, yet Parliament, combining the three estates, has absolute and sovereign power, unstinted and unlimited. It can suspend and does suspend Habeas Corpus.

Third. Our Constitution prohibits this emphatically. Neither Congress nor Executive (the latter is not included in Congress as the King is in Parliament) shall suspend it, forevermore, except,

Fourth. In cases of insurrection or rebellion. Who, then, shall have the right to suspend the Habeas Corpus?

Fifth. Every one who maintains that it can be proved with absolute certainty that the framers of the Constitution meant that Congress alone should have the power, and in all cases of insurrection, &c, is in error. There is doubt —  twofold doubt. It cannot mathematically be proved from the Constitution itself, or from analogy which does not exist, or from the debates, or history.

Sixth. The Constitution most clearly does not contemplate a state of things such as exists now. No framer ever thought of such a thing, or could have thought of it.

Seventh. If the power belongs to Congress alone, all it can do in cases of great emergency is the general grant of suspension to the Executive. Congress cannot enact the suspension in each case. It would amount to hardly anything more than the Congressional right to declare whether there is a rebellion or not, for the court has already declared that if there be an insurrection, it may be suspended.

Eighth. What is to be done if an insurrection takes place while Congress is not sitting, as was the case in the present Civil War, or when Congress cannot be assembled? This case may be readily imagined.

Ninth. I defy any assemblage of as stout lovers of liberty as I am, as patriotic as William the Silent, and as calm and unselfish as Washington, to say that a country can be saved in her last extremity, when the ship of state is drifting toward breakers, without the Executive's possession of the power to make arrests, disregarding the ever-glorious bars with which Anglican civicism has hedged in each citizen. This is dangerous; who does not know it? but all things of high import, all truths of elementary or highest character are dangerous. All medicine, all power, all civilization, all food, — all are dangerous.

Tenth. But this power in the Executive is less dangerous in the United States than in other countries; and no more dangerous in the Executive than in the Legislature, because responsibility centres, in the Executive, in an individual. Who can impeach a Congress? You can do it as little as you can try a people. God alone can do that, and does it severely, too.

Eleventh. If, in such a state of things as indicated in ninth, the Executive has not the power alluded to, that will happen which always happens — it must arrogate it; and usurpation is a greater danger still.

Twelfth. This whole question must not be arrogated by lawyers as a subject belonging to them alone, — or, I should say, to the lawyer alone. It is a question to be argued, weighed, and disposed of by the citizen and patriot within each of us, and by the statesman, in the loftiest sense. No party platitude or wheel-rattling of favorite theories, no special pleading of the keenest one-sidedness, no oratory of the finest flight, no insisting on the pound of flesh, can decide this question. . . .

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 328-30

Francis Lieber to Edward Bates, April 8, 1862

New York, April 8, 1862.

Sorry as I was to see your note of the 5th instead of yourself, I was nevertheless glad to hear once more from you. I agree with you regarding the absolute necessity of having the Mississippi. From the very beginning of the Civil War I have been convinced that the two main problems immediately to be solved were the possession of the whole Mississippi, and the conquest of Virginia and North Carolina. That done, the rest of the military work would soon and naturally follow. When I was lately in the West in search of one of my sons, wounded in the capture of Fort Donelson, I found the spirit of the soldiers excellent. The idea that the Mississippi belongs to them, in the fullest sense of the term, pervaded all, officer and private; and every one seemed fully to rely on General Halleck for the execution of that great work. General Halleck is a man. Why, however, every one asks, can we not keep step with the Western people? It would have been delightful to me to be able to converse with you on some points not belonging to the military portion of the history of this war, but not the less important, perhaps far more important. But it was not to be. Have you observed that I am attacked on the Habeas Corpus topic? Mr. Binney informs me that he is going very shortly to publish his No. II. on the suspension of the Habeas Corpus privilege. Many pamphlets have been published against him. I do not know whether he wishes this to be known, but the pamphlet will soon be out. My son Hamilton lost his left arm at Fort Donelson; and you may have observed that General Halleck has nominated him aid on his staff, with the rank of captain, for distinguished services in the capture of Fort Donelson, in which he was twice wounded. . . .

. . . His bravery is very highly spoken of. Of course his wound is not yet healed, but he does well. I have written to Mr. Childs to send me, if he can, a copy of the article “Lieber” in the forthcoming volume of Dr. Allibone's Dictionary. It contains a pretty full list of my works, for which you inquire in your letter. As soon as I receive it, it will be sent to you. The great question, what is to be done after we shall have taken possession of the revolted portions of our country, must present itself daily more seriously to the mind of the President, and to all his advisers. I have told my friend Charles Sumner that I cannot agree with his first position; there is too much State Rights Doctrine in it for me. But I am far from agreeing with those who seem to think that a revolted State, after such a catastrophe, may Jump back into the old state of things, like that famous old man, you will remember, who

. . . jumped into a bramble bush

And scratched out both his eyes;

And when he saw his eyes were out,

With all his might and main

He jumped into another bush,

And seratched them in again.

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 326-8

Francis Lieber to Senator Charles Sumner, April 1, 1862

New YorK, April 1, 1862.

. . . Regarding slavery, I repeat, let us compress it as much as we can. Let us free, in actual war, as many negroes that come to us as we can; let us emancipate the District; let us keep free every Territory; let us contrive and adopt some bonus for emancipation; let us distinctly emancipate the negroes of the open, avowed traitors; and what with increased cotton culture elsewhere, and the blow which the institution must receive from our victory, after having proclaimed itself a divine institution, it will dwindle and die out, — not perhaps without asking us to pay for the emancipation.

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 326

Francis Lieber to Senator Charles Sumner, December 28, 1861

New York, December 28, 1861.

A Petition.

After I had sealed the large letter of this date to you, my dear friend, I read the paper of to-day more carefully, and must needs add this fervent petition — of a single man, to be sure — to the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, namely, — that should the Trent affair be settled by sense and reason, he, the said chairman, will move heaven and earth, that it be not done without settling a principle. Let us have that, at least, for all the trouble and all the expense which England doubtless has already incurred in the premises. Let some portion, at least, of that poisonous question, Search and Visit, be settled, — what may be done, and what may not. I know you have thought of all this; but I could not help addressing this petition to you, — and I shall ever pray, &c, &c

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 325-6

Francis Lieber to Senator Charles Sumner, December 27, 1861

New York, December 27, 1861.

I wrote to you yesterday, my dear Sumner, and now intend to reply to your letter of the 24th. I must overcome a feeling of restraint, arising from the consciousness that I may present views which, by the time they reach you in your central position, may prove wholly out of the question. The difference of our positions makes the short distance from New York to Washington as long as that which separates a governor-general of the East Indies from the cabinet of St. James. My morning paper reports you to have said that all will come out right as to the “Trent.” If this be true, and if you had arbitration in view, you have probably found reason in your intercourse with Lord Lyons to modify your opinion on the infeasibility of arbitration, expressed in your letter to me.

Civilization will yet arrive, one of these days, at something like an international application of the principle of the Athenians, when Themistocles said that he knew something very useful to Athens, but doubtful as to justice, and they appointed Aristides to receive the secret and to decide what they should do. I wrote to Mr. Cushing at the time of our Oregon troubles, — when we behaved like schoolboys, and the English like men (very different from now), — what a blessed and simple thing it would be if nations could be brought to lay such things before the law faculty of some foreign high university; as some German States sent, in last appeal, important cases to the law faculty of some university not in the country. What, indeed, does an arbitrating monarch do? He gives, of course, the case to his Minister of Justice; and he again, if he is honest, gives it to some eminent jurists. How much more direct — ay, and dignified as well as truthful — would it be to appoint two jurists, with the injunction to elect jointly a third, to decide on knotty international questions! You know I am very positively against a permanent international court of arbitration, in the present state of our civilization. However, all this may be Utopian in the present case. If, then, decision by appeal to reason be still possible, I say, as I said to you before, take Prussia. Everything points to her. If Napoleon has really offered himself, it complicates matters. France would be, in this very case, an inadmissible judge; yet France would take the preference of Prussia, after Napoleon's offer, as a slight. There never was a case inherently more fit for high adjudication.  . . . Well, let us argue the case in court, — a high, impartial court, — and settle a principle. International law is the greatest blessing of modern civilization, and every settlement of a principle in the law of nations is a distinct, plain step in the progress of humanity. The Duke of Orleans said to Cardinal Dubois, when he commenced his regency, Un peu de droiture, mon ami. I wish I could say to the Americans and the English, Un peu de raison, mes amis, un peu de raison. Pardon me that I quoted a scamp.  . . . As to that international commission, or congress, of which I spoke, I did not mean it as in the least connected with the Trent business. I only meant that this business — when a captain of ours thought it clearly and honestly his duty, and the right of his country to do what he did, and when he executed it really with international delicacy — having brought nations to the brink of war, and seemingly bewildered the people of Great Britain, this would be a fair occasion to propose a congress of all maritime nations, European and American, to settle some more canons of the law of nations than were settled at the Peace of Paris, — canons chiefly or exclusively relating to the rights and duties of belligerents and neutrals on the sea; for there lies the chief difficulty. The sea belongs to all; hence the difficulty of the sea police, because there all are equals. I mean no codification of international law; I mean that such a congress, avowedly convened for such a purpose, should take some more canons out of the cloudy realm of precedents than the Peace of Paris did, almost incidentally. Suppose Russia, Austria, Italy, Prussia, France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, England, the United States, Brazil, Turkey,—all could be induced to send, each power, two jurists (with naval advisers if they chose), does any one, who knows how swelling civilization courses in our history, doubt that their debates and resolutions would remain useless, —even though the whole should lead, this time, to no more than an experiment? All those ideas that are now great and large blessings of our race, having wrought themselves into constitutions or law systems, belonged once to Utopia. Have I ever told you that I always direct the attention of my hearers to a branch of political science which I term Utopiology, — the knowledge of all the Utopias of philosophers, with their advance-guard ideas and their errors? To respect private property at sea, even in peace, was once very Utopian, even when Greece flourished in Periclean splendor. I go farther still, and say that even such a proposition, if made with dignity and simplicity, in a dignified place, free from all influence of “socictics,” but in a manly, statesmanlike way, would be of use, though not adopted. The history of ideas in our civilization points almost always to very narrow incipiencies, like the beginning of the Osman empire, — a standard planted before a tent, and an Osman that did it. There is a historical embryology that is very instructive. I can imagine some twenty canons settled by such a congress, — formulations like those of the Peace of Paris, — that would save much blood, much treasure, much anger. There is no sickly philanthropy in this; you know that I have no morbid feeling about war; what I wish, I wish as an earnest publicist, and in the name of international statesmanship.

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 323-5

Francis Lieber to Senator Charles Sumner, December 19, 1861 - Afternoon

New York, December 19, 1861, Afternoon.

. . . I do not wish to be misunderstood on the slavery question. My opinion — I give it as the individual opinion of a citizen — is that negroes coming into our lines must be, and are by that fact, free men; for, on the one hand, the United States cannot become auctioneers of human beings, and, on the other hand, our soldiers cannot see in a human being anything but his humanity. Is the being that flies to us a human being? that is, does he talk; has he reason; is he, black or white, a man, or is he a gorilla? You may remember I stated this, in my “Political Ethics,” to be the practical, the legal distinction. Or, to make it more distinct, does he belong to a class of beings who, in their normal state, speak? If he is a man, I say, then the army cannot, in its very essence, occupy itself with that mixture of humanity and thing, or chattel, characterizing slavery, and creating all the difficulty inherent in that institution (in antiquity as well as in modern times), — a mixture which even the Roman law acknowledges not to be owing to the law of nature, but to municipal law. That mixture of the two ideas, man and thing, which the chemist would call unmixable (like oil and water), is a forced one, — forced by municipal law or violence, — and ceases, I take it, by the inherent character of war, which, by its physical contest of men with men, reduces men again to their simple status of men. Suppose an Austrian peasant, with all his feudal obligations thick upon him, had presented himself to the army of Napoleon, and the feudal lord had asked his surrender; what would Napoleon's general have answered? The only difficulty in this case — as altogether in the slave question — arises from the black skin; but the law of nature does not acknowledge the difference of skin, and war is carried on by the law of nature. Those who commenced this Rebellion ought to have reflected upon this. It is now too late to talk — in the midst of war — of rights made or guaranteed by municipal or Constitutional law. They might as well ask for a writ of habeas corpus for a spy we may catch. . . .

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 322-3

Francis Lieber to Senator Charles Sumner, December 14, 1861

New York, December 14,1861.

As to that proposition to melt together the United States army and the volunteers, I wish to heaven I had the ear of some influential man in this matter. Nothing is more dangerous to modern civil liberty than a large democratic army; vide France. The traditional fear of standing armies, thoroughly founded in times past, when Louis XIV. and James II. were justly haunting the minds of upright men, must be changed into a fear of a large, thoroughly democratic army. In countries pervaded by an institutional spirit and system of self-government, — with a true, not nominal, representative national body, which keeps the army under its thumb as to size and appropriation, — the danger is not in the standing army, of itself. Look at England. Make our present large army a homogeneous, vast, democratic army; give it some suecesses; let some striking victory knit them well together, man to man, and to the general, — and every person versed in the analytical chemistry of history will tell you that a Bonaparte dictating after a Lodi is unavoidable. No congress, no parliament, can keep under an organized, vast, democratic army, especially when no sea intervenes. There is nothing so revolutionary as such an army. The sword is always arrogant. A soldier is writing this, — but a soldier who is a historian too, and a citizen, philosopher, and a man who is willing that this should be “hung out” after he is gone — as they used to hang out the proof-sheets in the early days of printing — for all that might choose to find errata. I stake my name to this. . . .

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 321

Francis Lieber to Senator Charles Sumner, November 29, 1861

November 29,1861.

. . . Let Congress declare that all negroes coming into our lines are free, because they cannot be otherwise, if fleeing from rebels. I think this would be a stride.

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 321

Francis Lieber to Senator Charles Sumner, June 22, 1861

New York, June 22,1861.

. . . If we can only weather the rock of sentimentality, or pretended sentimentality! You hear it continually asked here, “How can we ever unite again?” Why not? It has been done over and over again in history. There will be a scar left; but well-healed scars are no inconvenience, and sometimes they look well on a manly face. The countenance of every nation has its scars. . . .

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 320

Review: Lincoln's Code, The Laws of War in American History

Lincoln's Code: The Laws of War in American History

By John Fabian Witt

The laws of war govern the conduct of nations at war.  They are generally agreed terms that are internationally recognized as to how warfare is to be conducted, and what actions are not sanctioned by it.  Today we familiar with them as the Geneva Conventions.  They are result of hundreds of years of negotiations between nations and adapted to meet the evolving mores of their time.  But how were they developed and who was their author?  John Fabian Witt’s book “Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History” has the answer.

What we recognize today as the rules and laws of war were largely authored by a German-American jurist and political philosopher Frances Lieber.  His laws of war were encoded as Abraham Lincoln’s General Orders, No. 100 issued April 24, 1863 at the height of the American Civil War.  Before that however Professor Witt traces the rules of war from the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 to the Mexican War, The Civil War until the issuance of General Orders No. 100. 

A good deal of time is spent in the discussion of what to do with slaves during a time of war.  Once captured are they to be set free?  Are they to be enlisted by the conquering foe and used as combatants against their former owners?  Or are they to be returned to their owners once the hostilities have ceased?  These questions were debated and argued over from the outbreak of the American  Revolution until slavery was at last abolished at the close of the Civil War.

Professor Witt deftly handles Major-General William T. Sherman’s idea of a harsh and total war against civilians and soldiers alike, employed during his March to the Sea and the Carolina Campaign, and argues it benefitted the Union by lessening the length of the war.  It therefore the “hard hand of war” was the most humane way of bringing hostilities to a close with the least amount of human suffering.  A view later endorsed by German Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke.

Prize Courts and trials of civilians by Military Commissions are also thoroughly discussed, by the author.  Through it all Professor Witt shows how the guiding hand of Francis Lieber shaped the laws of war which are still largely in effect today.

“Lincoln’s Code,” is expertly researched and wonderfully written.  Its title may lead you to think it is exclusively Abraham Lincoln’s military policy during the Civil War, but it is so much more than that.  It is a book that not only belongs on the shelves of every student of the Civil War, but should also be equally shelved in law libraries across the country.

ISBN 978-1416569831, Free Press, © 2012, Hardcover, 512 pages, Photographs & Illustrations,  End Notes, Appendix & Index. $32.00.  To purchase this book click HERE.

Francis Lieber to George S. Hillard, June 12, 1861

New York, June 12,1861.

. . . My morning papers have not yet arrived. Is this delay connected with the unsuccessful fight at Newport News? We shall have many such news yet. Napoleon speaks very frequently of troops that are or are not yet aguerris. It is a fine term, full of meaning, and it will require many losses, blunders, — yes, and punishments of the commissariat, — before we have une armée bien aguerrie. If only two things be clearly carved out by this struggle, — the distincter nationalization of this country, and the wiping off of slavery from Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky, and Missouri, — all the struggle and heart-burning would be like a breeze. But if and only. . . .

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 320

Francis Lieber to Charles Sumner, June 2, 1861

June 2,1861.

Since I wrote the enclosed I have perused the news brought by the “America.” It is humiliating for us, who wish to honor England, to see her lowering herself thus. England has somewhat recovered from her Crimean loss of prestige, and she ought more carefully to husband her honor now. How bitterly the cup she is brewing now may one day be pressed to her mouth by the Irish, that her lips will bleed and her teeth will ache. England's conduct toward us forms a disgusting contrast to her repeated fawning on Napoleon, — England petting the South in her godless rebellion, and while even Virginians come out in favor of reopening the slave-trade I . . . We now want more than ever a large, sharp, and telling victory. That would change the premises, not only of Southern, but also of English syllogisms. I believe the cotton interest, the unpleasant consciousness of having played the second fiddle for a long time, the silly doctrine of State-sovereignty which seems to be acknowledged by almost all English papers, the snobbish idea of the gentlemanliness of the South, and the irritation at our tariff — all combined — have produced the remarkable state of feeling exhibited in the House of Lords. I find that the English news produced here only greater earnestness — no doubt still more so with you. What I fear most is that the next Congress will talk. There are some very vile fellows in it, e. g. our Wood. If they could only be made to abstain from all discussion of principle and let every vote be an act I 1 send a copy of a pamphlet of mine. The Psalm of to-day, read in church, had this beginning: “Why dost Thou stand so far away, O Lord?”

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 319-20

Francis Lieber to Charles Sumner, May 24, 1861

New York, May 24, 1861.

Dear Sumner, — I have hesitated a long time whether I ought to write to you in an affair, trifling for every one except myself and my son. I think, however, that I ought not to hesitate, and thus I write. My son Hamilton is among the Illinois troops at Cairo; for my son Norman, the youngest, I have solicited a lieutenant's commission in the army. Papers have been sent to the President, to Mr. Cameron, and to Mr. Seward, from presidential electors and several well-known citizens here. But if the ancients said, “Letters do not blush,” moderns may with equal correctness say, “Letters do not push.” My presence at Washington would not be of any use either. A professor has no influence in America; a literary man, even a publicist, has no more; and a New York professor or writer the least of all. Should you think it worth your while, in case you see Mr. Cameron, to say a word to him?

Norman is an admitted lawyer, a young man of strictly honorable principles, gentlemanly, and, like his father, ardent for the Union and for freedom. I say it as an old soldier, that he is in every way competent to do justice and honor to a commission in the army. If this reaches you, I should like to have a word from you.

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 318-9

Francis Lieber to George S. Hillard, May 11, 1861

New York, May 11, 1861.

I must write to you, my dear Hillard, although I have nothing to state, to give, or to ask, except, indeed, whether you are well, bodily of course — for who is mentally well nowadays? Behold in me the symbol of civil war: Oscar probably on his march to Virginia under that flag of shame, Hamilton in the Illinois militia at Cairo, Norman writing to-day to President Lincoln for a commission in the United States army, we two old ones alone in this whole house; but why write about individuals at a time like this!

Mr. Everett sent me for perusal a pamphlet written in 1821, by McDuflle, so hyper-national in tone and political concepts that it confuses even an old student of history and his own times, like myself.  . . . There are two things for which I ardently pray at this juncture: that there be soon a great and telling battle sufficient to make men think again, and somewhat to shake the Arrogantia autlralis out of the Southerners; and secondly that, if we must divide, we change our Constitution and shake the absurd State-sovereignty out of that. All, there are other things, too, for which I pray. I bite my lips, that Italy has stolen such a march over Germany. . . .

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 318

Francis Lieber to Samuel Tyler, April 14, 1861

New York, April 14, 1861.

My Dear Friend, — When your letters arrived I was busy writing out some lectures, the contents of which differ in many respects from what you seem to think right and true in our history and public affairs. I felt thus indisposed to write, and have now sent you a copy, — I beg you to be assured, — not to discuss things or challenge dispute, but simply and exclusively because not sending it to an old friend would have appeared to me unfriendly and cold. I take it for granted that you believe each word I have said to have come from my soul. You disagree; be it so. I am obliged to take far severer things. Oh, it is sad indeed to know a son in arms, and not to be able to pray for God's blessing on his arms, — to know that victory on his side is victory on the side of wrong. Let us not discuss these things. I have no ambition to bring you over to my side; there is no chance for you of bringing mo over to your side.

You complain of the bad grammar of President Lincoln's Message. We have to look at other things, just now, than grammar. For aught I know, the last resolution of the South Carolina Convention may have been worded in sufficiently good grammar, but it is an attempt, unique in its disgracefulness, to whitewash an act of the dirtiest infamy. Let us leave grammar alone in these days of shame, and rather ask whether people act according to the first and simplest rules of morals and of honor.

I had an idea of spending the summer vacation in Europe, but I believe I shall give up the trip. I feel ashamed and would be worried by constant talk about this wanton, criminal Rebellion. Good-by. No one wishes you more heartily the choicest blessings of heaven than I do.

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 317-8

Francis Lieber to G. S. Hillard, December 27, 1860

New York, December 27, 1860.

. . . I am very unhappy. My son Oscar is so imbued with all that I hold worst in South Carolina, that hardly anything is left between us but the thread of paternal and filial affection. I enter thus upon the last stage of old age! Such things must have happened in the Reformation; but that does not mitigate its bitterness. Unfortunately, too, my whole life has been spent, and my very profession obliges me to pass my days, in meditating on all that is going to ruin in corruption and by violence, — as it ever has been, and as it is.  . . . How happy Agassiz, is, who can shut himself up with his toads and turtles, and investigate that portion of nature which knows of no question of right or wrong, freedom or baseness, national unity or separation, treason or loyalty, purity or stealing, manliness or ignominy. I wish his work were not so monstrously dear. . .

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 316