?Artfully mixing law, history, and sharp analysis, a Yale law professor examines the persistent struggle to reconcile justice and humanitarianism in America?s conduct of war? (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). In the closing days of 1862, just three weeks before Emancipation, the administration of Abraham Lincoln commissioned a code setting forth the laws of war for US armies. The code announced standards of civilized conduct in wartime concerning torture, prisoners of war, civilians, spies, and slaves, and it shaped the remaining two years of the Civil War. By the twentieth century, Lincoln?s policies would be incorporated into the Geneva Conventions and serve as the foundation of warfare the world over. With sweep and vitality, author John Fabian Witt tells the fascinating history of the laws of war and its eminent cast of characters: Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, who championed Enlightenment rules for civilized warfare; James Madison, who went to war in 1812 to vindicate them; and Lincoln, who remade those same laws to support Emancipation and advance the Union war effort. From the Revolution to the War of 1812, from the war with Mexico to the Civil War, and from the Indian wars to counterinsurgency campaigns in the Philippines, Witt confronts the legal and moral dilemmas still raging over the conduct of warfare. ?A well-written and provocative examination of the effort to modify the inherent barbarism of war? (Booklist), Lincoln?s Code is the compelling story of an extraordinary commission that changed the course of world history.