Lieber, Francis.—One of the most distinguished German Americans of the Civil War period, was born in Berlin in1793, and as a schoolboy enlisted under BlÜcher and participated in the battle of Ligny, which immediately preceded the battle of Waterloo, and was wounded, returning home to resume his work as a schoolboy. Studied at Jena, Halle and Dresden, and taking part in public movements which were characterized as dangerous, was twice arrested, and at twenty-one took part in the Greek struggle. He left Germany in1825 and spent a year in England, after which he came to the United States. After passing a short time in Boston, he went to Philadelphia, where he engaged in the preparation of the “Encyclopedia Americana,” modeled upon “Brockhau’s Conversations Lexikon;” it was published in Philadelphia. After preparing an elaborate scheme for the management of Girard College, he engaged on independent authorship, went to the University of South Carolina in1835 as Professor of History and Political Economy, and there wrote and taught until 1857, when he gladly left the South.

At the outbreak of the Civil War he was quietly settled at Columbia College in New York, but one of his sons entered the Confederate service, another joined the Illinois troops in the Union army, and a third was given a commission in the regular army, while he himself began the work of legal adviser to the Government on questions of military and international law. In this capacity he prepared a code of instructions for the government of the armies of the United States in the field, and thenceforth was in constant employment in that direction, putting his vast store of learning at the disposal of the authorities on every fitting occasion. Although at an earlier period he had written in a somewhat disparaging tone of the aims and status of the German Americans, he saw that his apprehensions were at fault, as some 200,000 German-born Americans and above 300,000 German Americans of the second and third generations served in the Union Army.

He maintained a close correspondence with the leading German professors, Bluntschli, Mohl and Holtzendorff, and did much to secure in Germany a proper appreciation of the great work done for the world by securing the perpetuation of the American Union, and later on to make America alive to the merits of the struggle with France which secured German unity. His busy life ended in1872.

His services, says one biographer, were of a kind not often within the reach and range of a single life, and his memory deserves to be honored and kept green in both his native and his adopted country. He was well represented on the battlefields for the Union by his two sons, Hamilton, who served in the 92nd Illinois, and died in1876, an officer in the regular army, and Guido, who long after perpetuated Lieber’s name in the register of the regular army institution. The death of another son on the Confederate side was another sacrifice to the Union cause.

His “Instructions for the Armies in the Field,” General Order No.100, published by the government of the United States, April24, 1863, was the first codification of international articles of war, and marked an epoch in the history of international law and of civilization, says Rosengarten, and his contributions to military and international law, published at various times during the Civil War, together with his other miscellaneous writings on political science, were reprinted in two volumes of his works, issued by J.B. Lippincott & Co., in1881, and these, with his memoirs and the tributes paid him by President Gilman and Judge Thayer, are his best monuments. A memoir by T.S. Perry also deserves attention.