42 Facts About Francis Lieber

Francis Lieber was a German-American jurist and political philosopher.

Francis Lieber is best known for the Lieber Code, the first codification of the customary law and the laws of war for battlefield conduct, which served a later basis for the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and for the later Geneva Conventions.

Francis Lieber was a pioneer in the fields of law, political science, and sociology in the United States.

Francis Lieber obtained a doctorate from the University of Jena in 1820.

Francis Lieber wrote a plan of education for the newly founded Girard College and lectured at New York University before becoming a tenured professor of history and political economy at the University of South Carolina in 1835.

Francis Lieber transferred to Columbia Law School in 1865 where he taught until his death in 1872.

Francis Lieber was commissioned by the US Army to write the Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field, the Francis Lieber Code of military law that governed the battlefield conduct of the Union Army during the American Civil War.

The Francis Lieber Code was the first codification of the customary law and the laws of war governing the battlefield conduct of an army in the field, and later was a basis for the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and for the Geneva Conventions.

Franz Francis Lieber was born the tenth of twelve children to a wealthy Jewish merchant family in Berlin, then the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia.

Francis Lieber joined the Colberg Regiment of the Prussian Army in 1815 during the Napoleonic Wars, and was wounded in Namur, Belgium during the Battle of Waterloo.

Francis Lieber was treated in a military hospital in Huy, which was then part of the Netherlands but which is today Belgium.

Francis Lieber rejoined his regiment after recovering from his wounds, but developed a typhoid fever and was treated at military hospitals in Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne.

Francis Lieber became politically active during this time period, was arrested by Prussian authorities, and held for pretrial detention in Spandau prison from July to November 1819.

In Prussia, Francis Lieber was imprisoned and repeatedly questioned for his republican views.

Francis Lieber fought briefly on the Greek side in the Greek War of Independence.

Francis Lieber returned to Germany on a royal pardon, but was imprisoned , this time at Kopenick.

Francis Lieber was in pretrial detention at Kopenick from August 1824 to April 1825.

At Kopenick, Francis Lieber wrote a collection of poems entitled Wein- und Wonne-Lieder, which on his release, with Niebuhr's help, were published in Berlin in 1824 under the pen name of "Franz Arnold".

Francis Lieber fled to England in 1825, and supported himself for a year in London by giving lessons and contributing to German periodicals.

Francis Lieber wrote a tract on the Lancasterian system of instruction, and met his future wife, Mathilda Oppenheimer.

Francis Lieber left England upon receiving an offer to manage a gymnasium and swimming program in Boston.

Francis Lieber came with recommendations from Jahn, as well as from General Pfuel who ran a swimming program in Berlin.

Francis Lieber was acquainted with the outgoing gymnasium administrator, Charles Follen, both believing thoroughly in the importance of training the body along with the mind.

In Boston, Francis Lieber edited an Encyclopaedia Americana, after conceiving of the idea of translating the Brockhaus encyclopedia into English.

Francis Lieber was a confidant to Alexis de Tocqueville on the customs of the American people.

Francis Lieber was a nationalist, supporter of free trade, racist and opponent of slavery.

Francis Lieber soon became a professor of history and political economics at South Carolina College, where he owned slaves until his departure in 1856.

The spirit of Francis Lieber's work is indicated in his favorite motto, Nullum jus sine officio, nullum officium sine jure.

Francis Lieber chose his own title and became the first academic identified as a political scientist in the United States.

Francis Lieber sided with the North during the American Civil War, even though he had been a prominent resident of South Carolina.

Indeed, Francis Lieber was even a slave owner himself, and his brothers-in-law, members of the powerful Oppenheimer family dynasty, owned plantations and slaves in Puerto Rico.

However, in 1851, Francis Lieber delivered an address in South Carolina warning the southern states against secession.

One of his sons, geologist Oscar Montgomery Francis Lieber, joined the Confederate army and died at the Battle of Eltham's Landing.

Francis Lieber 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.

An abridged version of the Francis Lieber Code was published in 1899 in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies in 1899.

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.

From 1870 until his death in New York City, aged 72, Francis Lieber served as a diplomatic negotiator between the United States and Mexico.

Francis Lieber was chosen, with the united approval of the United States and Mexico, as final arbitrator in important cases pending between the two countries.

Francis Lieber was a member of the French Institute and of many learned societies in the United States and elsewhere.

Francis Lieber was married to Mathilde Oppenheimer, the daughter of a Hamburg merchant-banker.

Francis Lieber expressed hostile sentiment to the French, Turks and Russians.

Francis Lieber is cited after Hugo Grotius and Emer de Vattel and before Hersch Lauterpacht as a subsidiary means and an authority in determining the rules of law of war.