Francis Lieber Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Francis (Franz) Lieber (1798–1872) was an immigrant to the United States, yet he conceived, edited, and largely wrote the Encyclopedia Americana (1829) in the early nineteenth century. Born in Berlin, Germany, Lieber fought in the Prussian army during the Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815) and was wounded at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815. After leaving the army, he completed his doctorate at the University of Jena. Afterward, having acquired a reputation in Germany as a liberal agitator, he found it prudent to decamp with a crusade to liberate Greece from Ottoman rule. He returned from that abortive mission and attempted to enter academic professions in Prussia, but he was sufficiently suspect to be frequently imprisoned. He left Prussia, initially settling in England before relocating again to Boston, Massachusetts. Not quite two years after his arrival he began the Americana, becoming America’s interpreter of itself. He then allied with French historian and philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville and French statesman Gustave de Beaumont, translating and annotating their 1833 On the Penitentiary System in the United States.

Lieber became a professor of history and politics at South Carolina College (University of South Carolina) in 1836 and remained there until 1856.This was a period of enormous productivity for him, but the approaching Civil War (1861–1865) forced him to navigate between his liberal and antislavery principles and his growing influence within state academic and political establishments. During these years he published Legal and Political Hermeneutics (1837), Manual of Political Ethics (1838), Essays on Property and Labour (1841), and On Civil Liberty and Self-government (1853). The last of these major works tacitly replied to Southern politician John Calhoun, whose A Disquisition on Government and A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States provided the intellectual foundation for the secession movement. In his July 4, 1851, “Address on Secession” Lieber argued in principle against secession but without making an antislavery argument. At that point the debate was between South Carolina acting with cooperating states or acting alone. Lieber bolstered the argument of the cooperationists, who later prevailed.

Lieber’s avoidance of direct commentary on slavery and his ownership of a few house slaves hid an antislavery perspective. He wrote an enthusiastic review of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1853, but it remained unpublished, doubtless because of the sensitivity of doing so in South Carolina. However, his true beliefs emerged once he left the state for Columbia College in 1856. He became a strident defender of the Union and a voice against slavery.

Lieber coined the word publicist in application to himself. An active public intellectual, he advised on education, penal reform, “codes of war” (the Geneva Convention), arms sales, jury procedures, economic policy, and copyright law. He lobbied for in-depth statistics in the census and as a tool in political science. He was a philosopher, political economist, historian, and legal scholar. His best writings are perhaps his inaugural addresses at South Carolina College and Columbia College, describing the purposes of political economy and political history.

Lieber also maintained a private, philosophical correspondence in which he embraced Hegelian metaphysics (though not historical determinism) and had a more qualified view of religion than his public professions suggested. Author Walter Haushalter charges that Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science movement, plagiarized much of the content of the movement’s primary text, Science and Health, from an unpublished Lieber manuscript, “The Metaphysical Religion of Hegel.”

Bibliography:

Brooks, Lee M. “Sociology in the Works of Francis Lieber.” Social Forces 8 (December 1929): 231–241.
Brown, Bernard Edward. American Conservatives: The Political Thought of Francis Lieber and John W. Burgess. New York: Columbia University Press, 1951.
Dorfman, Joseph, and Rexford G. Tugwell. “Francis Lieber: German Scholar in America.” Columbia University Quarterly 30 (1938): 159–190, 267–293.
Farr, James. “Francis Lieber and the Interpretation of American Political Science.” Jour nal of Politics 52 (1990): 1027–1049.
Freidel, Frank. Francis Lieber: Nineteenth-century Liberal. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1947.
The Life of Francis Lieber. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1942.
Gilman, Daniel C., ed. The Miscellaneous Writings of Francis Lieber. New York: Lippincott, 1881.
Harley, Lewis R. Francis Lieber: His Life and Political Philosophy. 1899. Reprint, New York: AMS, 1970.
Haushalter,Walter M. Mrs. Eddy Purloins from Hegel: Newly Discovered Source Reveals Amazing Plagiarisms in Science and Health. Boston: Beauchamp, 1936.
Lieber, Francis. Encyclopædia Americana. Edited by Francis Lieber, assisted by E.Wigglesworth. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Carey, 1829–1847.
Fragments of Political Science on Nationalism and Internationalism. New York: Scribner, 1868.
Manual of Political Ethics. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1890.
On Civil Liberty and Self-government. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1853.
Slavery, Plantations and the Yeomanry. New York:Westcott, 1863.
The Stranger in America. 2 vols. London: R. Bentley, 1835.

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