Enoch Herbert Crowder was an American army officer, diplomat, and lawyer.
Background
Enoch Herbert Crowder was born on April 11, 1859 in Edinburg, Missouri, United States. He was the son of John Herbert and Mary (Weller) Crowder. His parents, of English pioneer stock, had moved from Ohio to Iowa in 1856, and from the latter state to Missouri in 1858. Enoch was the third child in a family of three sons and four daughters. As a child he was frail, and with the family, he endured many privations while his father served with the Union army during the Civil War.
Education
He attended the Grand River College in Edinburg. He finished the course of study (preparatory) when he was sixteen. In 1877 he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating thirty-first in a class of fifty-four in 1881. He took a course in law, receiving the degree of LL. B. in 1886.
Career
His plebe from Missouri was John J. Pershing. Immediately following his graduation he was commissioned second lieutenant in the 8th Cavalry and sent to Fort Brown, Texas. Upon his arrival he was assigned quarters with William Crawford Gorgas and this was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
When not occupied with post and frontier duties, Crowder studied law and on March 7, 1884, he was licensed as an attorney at law by the circuit court of Hidalgo County, Texas. In 1884 he was transferred to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, and the year following he was detailed as professor of military science and tactics in the University of Missouri at Columbia, where he remained until 1889. There he whipped the student battalion into good shape, persuaded the faculty to give academic credit for military training, and introduced the idea of a summer camp. He shocked many by offering military instruction to a separate company of girls, and he prevailed on the General Assembly of Missouri to make the cadet corps a part of the state militia with commissions for the officers.
For a time he gave lectures on constitutional and international law as a part-time instructor in the law school.
During the summer of 1886, Crowder joined his regiment in New Mexico and commanded Troop G in the Geronimo campaign. His other vacation periods while on detail at Columbia were divided between student camps and the reading of law in the offices of Crittenden, MacDougal & Stiles in Kansas City.
In 1889 he was sent to Fort Yates and the year following he was a member of a detachment which rescued the Indian Scouts at the time the Sioux chieftain Sitting Bull was killed. In 1891 he was detailed as captain and acting judge-advocate and assigned to the Department of the Platte at Omaha, Nebraska.
On January 11, 1895, he was appointed major in the Judge-Advocate-General's Department, and from then on until his retirement from the army in 1923, his service was as a member of that corps.
During the Spanish-American War Crowder was sent to the Philippines, where he served as judge-advocate on the staff of Gen. Wesley Merritt. Following the war he became the military secretary (civil adviser and administrator) of Gen. E. S. Otis and Gen. Arthur MacArthur in their successive governorships. He was a member of the commission to determine the capitulation of Manila and the Spanish army, president of the Board of Claims, a member of the board of officers for the revision of basic laws, and an associate justice of the supreme court (civil branch). Before returning to the United States in 1901, he was commissioned a brigadier-general of volunteers.
From 1901 to 1903 Crowder was occupied with legal work (investigations, trials, and appeals) for the Judge-Advocate-General's Department. In 1903 he was promoted to the rank of colonel. During 1904-05 he served as a military observer in the Russo-Japanese War, being assigned to the staff of General Kuroki of the First Japanese Army. During the Second Intervention in Cuba, 1906-09, he was on the executive staff of Provisional-Governor Charles E. Magoon, and in effect he became the minister of state and justice. He supervised the Cuban elections of 1908 and headed the advisory law commission which drafted most of the organic laws of the Republic. In 1910 he was a delegate to the Fourth Pan-American Conference in Buenos Aires, and a special envoy of President Taft at the celebration of the Centenario in Chile. On February 15, 1911, Crowder was appointed judge-advocate-general of the army with the rank of brigadier-general. He received three successive appointments to this office. During his administration the Articles of War were revised, the Manual for Courts-Martial was largely rewritten, military prisons were modernized, and the penal system was reformed. Early in 1917, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker requested Crowder to prepare a selective service act for the consideration of Congress. With the aid of subordinates and after consultations with members of the General Staff and leaders of the military committees of Congress, he drafted a bill, and this bill, with a few changes, was enacted into law by Congress on May 18, 1917. A significant feature of the bill was its provision for the creation of a national army through the medium of local draft boards. On May 22 Crowder was detailed as provost-marshal-general to administer the act, and in the following October he was promoted to the rank of major-general. Although several persons have claimed the authorship of the draft law, the chief credit for this legislation belongs to Crowder.
Following the World War Crowder served his government as special representative, minister, and ambassador in Cuba. His success in solving electoral disputes, in advising the Cuban government on economic matters, and in introducing legal and administrative reforms won acclaim in both Washington and Habana. His "thirteen memoranda" to President Zayas are classic examples of benevolent interference in Cuban affairs under the Platt Amendment.
In 1927, after fifty years of public service, he resigned his post as ambassador to Cuba. Returning to the United States, he opened a law office in Chicago and for a time he represented several sugar and public utility corporations. Ill health forced his retirement in 1931, and in May of the following year he died in the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington.
He was buried in the Arlington National Cemetery--the marker justly recording that he was "a military man who understood the spirit of a free people. "
Personality
Crowder was never robust, yet his most outstanding characteristic was his capacity for incessant work.
Quotes from others about the person
"He drafted the law for this great undertaking; he perfected with extraordinary accuracy the registration; and he worked out with infinite patience and zeal, the arrangements for the great choice which affects the careers and lives of so many young men of our country. "