Lieber, Francis (1800–1872)

German-born US political reformer, editor, and political scientist. Two of his works, Manual of Political Ethics (1838–39) and On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853) provided the first thorough analysis of American government since its inception. Known for his ideas on prison reform, he also drafted a Code for the Government of the Armies of the United States (1863), which was adopted by the Union army; essentially the first code of international law governing war, it was later used as the basis for the Hague Convention.

Lieber was born in Berlin, Germany. As a youth he fought against Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo. Persecuted, and imprisoned, as a liberal in Prussia, he fled in 1826 and arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1827. Proposing to translate a German encyclopedia, he so enlarged and revised it that he ended up editing a new 13-volume Encyclopedia Americana (1829–33). He taught at the University of South Carolina (1835–57) and Columbia University (1857–72).