Abstract

AbstractThis essay analyzes General Orders No. 100, a U.S. Civil War document considered the fırst modern codifıcation of the rules of war. Recent scholarship praises the humanitarian nature of the legal code, especially as it concerns the emancipation of slaves. Without rejecting these features, I argue that the code marks a key shift in the legal framing of war. The author, Francis Lieber, uses new spatial and temporal boundaries to forge a sprawling and timeless fıeld of battle while amplifying the moral mandate of war to grant legitimacy to numerous acts of harsh violence. The only safeguard to Lieber’s broad mandate for military force is a vague notion of self-restraint that I label “humane nationalism.” Given the enormous influence of the Lieber Code, its rhetoric marks a powerful antecedent to how nations conduct warfare and legitimize what we now call “total war.”

Journal
Rhetoric & Public Affairs
Published
2020-03-01
DOI
10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.1.0047
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Open Access
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References (99) · 3 in this index

  1. 1. See "Peace and Amnesty Declared in the Philippines," Boston Globe, July 4, 1902, 1
  2. A Compilation of the Messages and Speeches of Theodore Roosevelt, 1901-1905, ed. Alfred H. Lewis (Washington,…
  3. 2. For an overview of this debate, see Frank Schumacher, “‘Marked Severities’: The Debate over Torture during…
  4. 3. Francis Lieber, “General Orders No. 100: The Lieber Code,” Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and D…
  5. 4. Moorfıeld Storey and Julian Codman, Secretary Root’s Record–“Marked Severities” in Philippine Warfare: An …
Show all 99 →
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  2. 6. See Storey and Codman, “Marked Severities,” 33–40. Root also supported his claims for military righteousne…
  3. 7. Jonathan Hyslop, “The Invention of the Concentration Camp: Cuba, Southern Africa and the Philippines, 1896…
  4. 8. Elihu Root, “Francis Lieber,” American Journal of International Law 7 (1913): 459.
  5. 9. For an overview of Lieber’s life and the code’s influence, see Frank Freidel, Francis Lieber: Nineteenth-C…
  6. 10. Freidel describes how “Union commanders and military governors seem to have attached relatively little im…
  7. 11. Freidel, “General Orders 100,” 555–56. See also Joseph G. Dawson III, “The First of the Modern Wars?” in …
  8. 12. This new war rhetoric shifted attention away from a limited focus on the legal meaning of individual batt…
  9. and Lass Francis Oppenheimer, International Law: A Treatise Volume 1, 2nd ed. (New York: Longmans, Green and …
  10. 13. Geoffrey Best, Humanity in Warfare, 171.
  11. 14. Best, Humanity in Warfare, 129.
  12. Rhetoric & Public Affairs
  13. 16. It bears emphasizing that I do not believe these elements were necessarily intentional on Lieber’s part, …
  14. 17. Hugh Bicheno defınes “total war” as “one in which the whole population and all the resources of the comba…
  15. 18. This is a point that has been more commonly analyzed through later conflicts, such as the National Securi…
  16. 19. The topic of warfare is ubiquitous in the history of Western rhetorical studies. Aristotle identifıes war…
  17. 20. The codes were foundational in constructing legal parameters of war in the ensuing decades, including the…
  18. 21. For a comparative look at this process from the Alien and Sedition Acts to the Espionage Act to the Patri…
  19. 22. Mark E. Neely, “Was the Civil War a Total War?” Civil War History 50 (2004): 434-58. For more on the deba…
  20. 23. Neely, “Was the Civil War a Total War?”
  21. 24. Roger Stahl highlights how the rhetoric of temporality informs war discourse by identifying tropes that s…
  22. 25. Edwin Black, "Gettysburg and Silence," Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 (1994): 22. In the fıeld of history…
  23. Michael Leff, "Dimensions of Temporality in Lincoln's Second Inaugural," Communication Reports 1 (1988): 26-31
  24. Philosophy & Rhetoric
  25. Rhetoric & Public Affairs
  26. 27. A fuller understanding of the argumentative terrain of military violence can help trace the legacy of the…
  27. 28. John Fabian Witt, Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History (New York: Free Press, 2012).
  28. 29. D. H. Dilbeck, A More Civil War: How the Union Waged a Just War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolin…
  29. 30. While Witt does note Lieber’s reliance on the notion of “military necessity,” I try to consider the rheto…
  30. 31. Dilbeck, A More Civil War, 69.
  31. 32. Witt, Dilbeck, and Freidel observe these features in Lieber’s Code, but my focus is on how the text serve…
  32. 33. Dilbeck, “‘The Genesis of This Little Tablet with My Name’: Francis Lieber and the Wartime Origins of Gen…
  33. 34. Hogue, “Lieber’s Code,” xvi.
  34. 35. Dilbeck emphasizes the moral focus of Lieber’s Code, “Genesis,” 247. Andrew F. Lang similarly notes the p…
  35. 36. Recent scholarship on the history of military law points to the nineteenth century as a key period of tra…
  36. 37. John Childs, Warfare in the Seventeenth Century (London: Cassell, 2016); and Gunther E. Rothenberg, Napol…
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  39. 40. In the context of the Civil War, Lieber’s degree of clarity is reasonable—the “explicit act” had been the…
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  41. 42. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 2.
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  50. 51. Lieber makes frequent use of the “organic” as a political metaphor, stressing the interdependent nature o…
  51. 52. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 15.
  52. 53. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 15.
  53. 54. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 15.
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  55. 56. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 15. See also Articles 29 and 138.
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  57. 58. As cited in Dilbeck, A More Civil War, 88.
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  65. 66. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 28.
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  67. 68. We can see such behavior more clearly exhibited in later wars. James T. Sparrow illuminates the mechanism…
  68. 69. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 23.
  69. 70. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 23.
  70. 71. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 8.
  71. 72. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 44.
  72. 73. For a survey of how nonviolence can be creatively enacted as an alternative to violence, see Gene Sharpe,…
  73. 74. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 20.
  74. 75. Whitman, Verdict of Battle.
  75. 76. See Lieber, “No Party Now;” and Lieber, “What Is Our Constitution?” The term “organic war” may be more hi…
  76. 77. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 50.
  77. 78. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 86.
  78. 79. Lieber, “No Party Now.”
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  80. 81. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 90.
  81. 82. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 155.
  82. 83. Abraham Lincoln to Erastus Corning and Others, in The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Steven B. Smith (N…
  83. 84. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 157.
  84. 85. Lieber, “General Orders No. 100,” Article 156. Note this article is in a section qualifıed as specifıcall…
  85. 86. For a rich survey of the social and cultural defınitions of loyalty during this time, see Blair, With Mal…
  86. 87. See W. Michael Reisman and Chris Anthony, The Laws of War: A Comprehensive Collection of Primary Document…
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  88. 89. Dilbeck, A More Civil War; and John Fabian Witt, Lincoln’s Code.
  89. 90. Lieber, “No Party Now;” and Lieber “What Is Our Constitution?”
  90. 91. Referencing Article 156 of the Lieber Code, Union Major General Robert H. Milroy and Major General Robert…
  91. 92. For a model of such scholarship, see Downs and Masur, The World the Civil War Made.
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  93. 94. Downs and Masur describe the postemancipation bureaucratic system as a “stockade state”; The World the Ci…
  94. 95. Abraham Lincoln to John M. Schofıeld, October 1, 1863 in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln Volume 6. Ava…