Slavery and Black Prisoners of War
The Lieber Code was probably commissioned by the Lincoln Administration to deal with the crisis touched off by Emancipation, which the Confederate States of America insisted was in violation of the customary rules of warfare. Moreover, Confederate officials such as Jefferson Davis had announced that the South would treat black Union soldiers as criminals, not as soldiers, subject to execution and re-enslavement upon capture. The Lieber Code defended the lawfulness of Emancipation under the laws of war and insisted that those same laws prohibited discrimination on the basis of color among combatants.
One recent author says that the Code's association with Emancipation and the problem of black Union soldiers was so close that it ought to be called not Lieber's Code, but Lincoln's Code, since it was part and parcel of the most important decision of Lincoln's presidency.
Read more about this topic: Lieber Code
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