By John Fabian Witt
In the fateful closing days of 1862, three weeks before
Emancipation, the administration of Abraham Lincoln commissioned a code setting
forth the laws of war for the armies of the United States. The code announced
standards of civilized conduct in wartime concerning issues such as torture,
prisoners of war, civilians, spies, and slaves. The code Lincoln approved
ultimately shaped the course of the Civil War. And when the war was over, the
same code reshaped warfare the world over. By the twentieth century, the 157
articles of Lincoln’s code had become the basis of a new international law of
war. European powers adopted the American code. International agreements like
the Geneva Conventions incorporated and expanded it.
In this path-breaking and deeply original book, John Fabian
Witt tells the hidden story of the laws of war in the first century of the United
States–and of the extraordinary code that emerged from it to change the course
of world history. Lincoln’s Code is the haunting and inspiring story of an idea
in American history: the idea that conduct in war can be regulated by law. For
many, the very idea of a law for war has seemed like an oxymoron. But with
sweep and vitality, Witt unfolds the story of the cast of characters who
invented the modern laws of war. Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin championed
Enlightenment rules for civilized warfare.
James Madison went to war in 1812 to vindicate them. Indian
conflicts challenged and distorted them. The Mexican War quietly revolutionized
them. In the Civil War, Lincoln and a small band of now forgotten figures
helped remake those same laws to support Emancipation and advance the Union war
effort. Three decades later, a new generation of Americans went into a war of
American empire in the Philippines equipped with the very rules Lincoln had
laid down.
In beautifully crafted prose, Witt brings to life the
soldiers and the presidents, the war makers and the pacifists, the Indians and
the slaves, the cynics, the utopians, and the pragmatists who struggled with
enemies and with one another to shape the United States’ vision of the laws of
war. A narrative of expansive range and significance, Lincoln’s Code depicts
the drama of armed conflict and the anguish of human beings grappling with such
vexing questions as whether prisoners could be executed; whether there were
rules in Indian wars; whether military commissions could try unlawful
combatants; whether torture might ever be justified; and whether slaves could
be freed in wartime. The code Lincoln issued prohibited cruelty and the
infliction of pain for its own sake but left room for vast destruction in the
name of a just cause. It condoned the devastation inflicted in Sherman’s march
to the sea. Yet it also provided a moral foundation for Emancipation and
insisted that doing the right thing in situations of grave crisis was
indispensable to the legitimacy of modern armies.
Witt’s engrossing exploration of the dilemmas at the heart
of the laws of war is a prehistory of our own era. Today the world once again
confronts raging legal and moral controversy over the conduct of war. Lincoln’s
Code reveals that the controversies of the twenty-first century have roots
going back to the beginnings of American history. In a time of heated
controversy about the nation’s conduct in wartime, Lincoln’s Code is a
compelling story of ideals under pressure and a landmark contribution to our
understanding of the American experience.
About the Author
John Fabian Witt is the Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960
Professor of Law at Yale Law School, a professor of history at Yale University,
and a 2010 Guggenheim Foundation fellow. His writing has appeared in
publications such as The New York Times, Slate, and the Harvard
Law Review. He is the author of two previous books on the history of
American law: Patriots and Cosmopolitans and The Accidental Republic.
ISBN 978-1416569831, Free Press, © 2012, Hardcover, 512
pages, Photographs & Illustrations, End Notes, Appendix & Index. $32.00
No comments:
Post a Comment