17 Facts About Enoch Crowder

Major General Enoch Herbert Crowder, USA was an American Army lawyer who served as the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army from 1911 to 1923.

Enoch Crowder entered West Point in 1877, graduating in 1881.

Lieutenant Enoch Crowder was assigned to the 8th Cavalry, stationed around Brownsville, Texas.

In 1885, Lieutenant Enoch Crowder was assigned Professor of Military Science at the University of Missouri.

In January 1895, this temporary branch transfer became final and Enoch Crowder was promoted to major.

Enoch Crowder served on the commission which arranged the Spanish surrender of the Philippines.

Taft had Enoch Crowder serve as a de facto advisor to the Vatican's counsel regarding the transfer of "friars' lands" to Philippine nationals in an attempt to create a system of indigenous land ownership in the hopes that the people of the Philippines would have a stake in their eventual independence.

Enoch Crowder additionally supervised the revision of the Articles of War for the first time since 1874, revised the Manual for Courts-Martial and took an active part in prison reform in the army.

In 1918, the offices of Secretary of War Newton D Baker issued the "work or fight" order, and Crowder became in charge of executing the order which mandated that virtually every activity in the country support the war effort.

Enoch Crowder was instrumental in ensuring that the United States applied the laws of war to German prisoners of war, and he sought to limit military jurisdiction to uniformed personnel.

On September 26,1918, in response to newspaper reports of military camps being overcome by the Great Influenza Pandemic, Enoch Crowder cancelled the military draft calls for October.

Enoch Crowder wrote a book entitled The Spirit of Selective Service.

Enoch Crowder stayed for several years with the US title Special Representative of the President and imposed reforms and appointments on the government of President Alfredo Zayas before a US bank would make a critical loan to the Cuban government.

Nevertheless, Enoch Crowder retired from the army on February 14,1923, and on the same day was appointed the first Ambassador from the United States to Cuba, a post which he held until 1927.

From 1927 until his death in 1932, General Enoch Crowder was engaged in the private practice of law in Chicago.

Enoch Crowder's name is memorialized in his home state of Missouri through the naming of a state park in his honor and through the designation of the World War II training center at Neosho, Missouri, as Camp Crowder.

The ROTC building at the University of Missouri, Enoch Crowder Hall, is named in his honor.