By: James G. Apple, Editor-in-Chief, International Judicial Monitor and President, International Judicial Academy

The history of international law in the United States has not been a subject very much studied, either inside or outside of academe, until recently (see In Review, this edition). And since the history of international law in the United States includes those personalities, judicial or otherwise, who have been involved in that history, they too have been long ignored.  The names of James Kent and Henry Wheaton are two early U.S. commentators on international law, both in the early to mid 19^th Century, but their names are virtually unknown to all except legal historians. Even more obscure is Henry Wager Halleck, who wrote a much admired and comprehensive book on international law, also in mid-19^th Century, that went through at least four editions, and which has been cited as a leading authority by the United States Supreme Court and in courts in the United Kingdom.

He was also instrumental in bringing about a major contribution to international humanitarian law (law of war).

Henry Wager Halleck was born in 1815 in a small town in upstate New York (Westernville, Oneida County), the son of a farmer. He attended Union College in Schenectady, New York and then the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, graduating third in the class of 1839. He taught briefly at the Academy before being assigned to California during the Mexican War. At war’s end Halleck stayed in California and eventually joined a law firm in San Francisco. His firm, Halleck, Peachy and Billings, became one of the most powerful in the state and the three partners were among the very wealthy citizens of San Francisco during the decade of the 1850s.

Halleck practiced law during the time of the California gold rush. The San Francisco harbor was filled with the hulls of abandoned ships, their crews having departed for the gold fields around Sutter’s Fort near present day Sacramento. Halleck made a practice of boarding the abandoned ships gathering abandoned books, many of which dealt with various aspects of what was then called the law of nations, particular international maritime law or what is now known as the law of the sea, and the nascent subject of international humanitarian law, now commonly referred to as the law of war. These texts kindled his interest and he set to work on the book on international law mentioned earlier, which he finished and published in 1853. It became, according to one source, one of the most popular books of the latter part of the 19^th Century and went through at least four editions.

At the beginning of the American Civil War, Halleck ceased practicing law and accepted a commission of major general in the Army of the United States. He was assigned to the Military Department of the West, with headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. He eventually was appointed Commander of all the Union Armies in the West. After the famous battle of Shiloh in Tennessee, Halleck left St. Louis to assume command of the Union western armies in the field, a position formerly held by General Ulysses S. Grant, who had been disgraced by the circumstances of the Battle of Shiloh.

In May of 1862 Halleck launched the Corinth (Mississippi) campaign, a movement to capture one of the major rail centers of the Confederate States of America. During that campaign Halleck met and talked with a college political science professor named Francis Lieber, who was interested in the laws of war and the need for restraints on the actions of soldiers during wartime. General Halleck, who was familiar with this subject because of his previous authorship of a book on international law, encouraged Lieber to pursue his interest. The ultimate result of this meeting was the preparation of a code by Professor Lieber on a variety of subjects relating to the actions of soldiers in war, including martial law, retaliation, protection of civilians and places of worship, deserters, hostages, prisoners of war, partisans, scouts, safe conduct, flags of truce, spies, traitors, captured messengers, prisoner exchanges and parole.

General Halleck was called to Washington in July, 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln to assume the position of General-in-Chief of the Armies of the United States. He ultimately received from Professor Lieber this code relating to the laws of war. The Lieber Code, as it came to be known, contained 10 major sections and 157 separate articles. The provisions of the Code were embodied in General Order 100, promulgated by President Lincoln in April, 1863. It had an almost immediate effect. At the end of the Civil War in April, 1865, the United States government charged the commandant of the notorious Andersonville Prison in the state of Georgia, Major Henry Wirz, with war crimes. One of the charges against him was that he had violated the provisions of the Lieber Code relating to treatment of prisoners. In what was probably the first war crimes trial in history, Major Wirz was found guilty and hanged in Washington, D.C. in sight of the U.S. Capitol.

The Lieber Code was the first code devoted to the laws of war and became one of the foundations for the Geneva Conventions on the laws of war, which figure prominently in wartime actions even today.

Henry Halleck’s contributions to international law did not end with his death in Louisville, Kentucky in 1872. His book on international law continued in print and continued to influence the development of international law both in the United States and in Europe. When the American Society of International Law, founded in 1906, began publication of the American Journal  of International Law one year later, the first issues contained two articles on international law as it relates to the laws of war written by General Halleck before his death and discovered among his papers after it.

Addendum:

It is perhaps noteworthy that General Halleck made an enormous contribution to the cause of American history. Immediately after the Civil War he was assigned to command the Military Division of the James with headquarters in Richmond, Virginia, the recent capital of the Confederate States of America. When he assumed command, he and his men discovered all, or almost all, of the official Confederate war records. Halleck immediately realized their worth, and ordered the records to be secured, packaged and sent to Washington, D.C. for safe keeping, thus preserving them for study by thousands of historians and scholars since that time. As a result citizens of the United States and around the world can now know the true story of the American Civil War from both sides, from the official records of the United States Army, and the official records of the Army of the Confederacy, saved for posterity by General Henry Wager Halleck.