@article{453799,
      recid = {453799},
      author = {Witt, John Fabian.},
      title = {Lincoln's code : the laws of war in American history /},
      publisher = {Free Press,},
      address = {New York :},
      pages = {viii, 498 p., [16] p. of plates :},
      year = {2012},
      abstract = {"By one of the nation's foremost legal historians, a  groundbreaking history of the pioneering American role in  establishing the modern laws of war.In the fateful closing  days of 1862, just three weeks before Emancipation, Abraham  Lincoln's top military advisors commissioned a code of  rules to govern the armies of the United States in a newly  intensified war effort. The code Lincoln issued the next  spring helped shape the remaining two years of Civil War.  Its rules on torture, prisoners of war, assassination, and  more quickly became foundations of the modern laws of war  and today's Geneva Conventions. Yet the hidden story of  Lincoln's code, and of the decades of controversy that lay  behind it, has never been told. In this masterful and  strikingly original history, John Witt charts the  alternately troubled and triumphant course of the laws of  war in America from the Founding Founders to the dawn of  the modern era, revealing the history of a code that  reshaped the laws of war the world over. Ranging from the  Revolution to the War of 1812, from war with Mexico to the  Civil War, from Indian wars to the brutal counterinsurgency  campaign in the Philippines, Witt tells a story that  features presidents as well as men in the throes of battle,  one that spans war-makers and pacifists, Indians and  slaves. In a time of heated controversy about the nation's  conduct in the war on terror, Lincoln's Code is a  compelling story of ideals under pressure and a landmark  contribution to our understanding of the American  experience. "--},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/453799},
}