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Joseph Holt, the stern, brilliant, and deeply committed Unionist from Kentucky, spent the first several months of the American Civil War successfully laboring to maintain Kentucky's loyalty to the Union, then went on to serve as President Lincoln's judge advocate general. InLincoln's Forgotten Ally, Elizabeth Leonard offers the first full-scale biography of Holt, who has long been overlooked and misunderstood by historians and students of the war.In his capacity as the administration's chief arbiter and enforcer of military law, Holt strove tenaciously, often against strong resistance, to implement Lincoln's wartime policies, including emancipation. After Lincoln's assassination, Holt accepted responsibility for pursuing and bringing to justice everyone involved in John Wilkes Booth's conspiracy. It was because of this role, in which he is often portrayed as a brutal prosecutor, and because of his hard position toward the South, Leonard contends, that Holt's reputation suffered. Leonard argues, however, that Holt should not be defined by what Southern sympathizers and proponents of the Lost Cause came to think of him.Lincoln's Forgotten Allyseeks to restore Holt, who dedicated both his energy and his influence to ensuring that the Federal victory would bring about lasting positive change for the nation, to his rightful place in American memory.

Major General Enoch Crowder served as the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army from 1911 to 1923. In 1915, Crowder convinced Congress to increase the size of the Judge Advocate General's Office—the legal arm of the United States Army—from thirteen uniformed attorneys to more than four hundred. Crowder's recruitment of some of the nation's leading legal scholars, as well as former congressmen and state supreme court judges, helped legitimize President Woodrow Wilson's wartime military and legal policies. As the United States entered World War I in 1917, the army numbered about 120,000 soldiers. The Judge Advocate General's Office was instrumental in extending the military's reach into the everyday lives of citizens to enable the construction of an army of more than four million soldiers by the end of the war. Under Crowder's leadership, the office was responsible for the creation and administration of the Selective Service Act, under which thousands of men were drafted into military service, as well as enforcement of the Espionage Act and wartime prohibition. In this first published history of the Judge Advocate General's Office between the years of 1914 and 1922, Joshua Kastenberg examines not only courts-martial, but also the development of the laws of war and the changing nature of civil-military relations. The Judge Advocate General's Office influenced the legislative and judicial branches of the government to permit unparalleled assertions of power, such as control over local policing functions and the economy. Judge advocates also altered the nature of laws to recognize a person's diminished mental health as a defense in criminal trials, influenced the assertion of US law overseas, and affected the evolving nature of the law of war. This groundbreaking study will appeal to scholars, students, and general readers of US history, as well as military, legal, and political historians.

Along with F-16s and A-6s, U.S. military lawyers were in the spotlight in the Persian Gulf War. Their role as advisers to military commanders made them more closely involved in high-level decision-making than any of their ranks in any previous war.