OLIVER O. HOWARD.
Can there be a Christian Soldier?--General Howard's Birth--His
Military Education--His Life Before the Rebellion--Resigns in
Order to get into the Field--Made Brigadier for Good Conduct
at Bull Run--Commands the Eleventh Corps and Joins the Army
at Chattanooga--His Services in the Army of the Potomac--
Extreme Calmness on the Field of Battle--Services with Sherman
--Sherman's high Opinion of him--Col. Bowman's Admiration
of Howard's Christian Observances--Patriotic Services while
Invalided at Home--Reproves the Swearing Teamster--Placed
over the Freedmen's Bureau--The Central Historic Fact of the
War--The Rise of Societies to Help the Freedmen--The Work of
the Freedmen's Bureau--Disadvantages Encountered by it, and by
General Howard--Results of the Bureau thus far--Col. Bowman's
Description of Gen. Howard's Duties--Gen. Sherman's Letter to
Gen. Howard on Assuming the Post--Estimate of Gen. Howard's
Abilities.
The spirit of Christ is all love; it seeks only to enhance the highest
good of existence, and to give to every being its utmost of happiness.
The spirit of war is all wrath. It seeks to destroy by violence, and
as fast as possible, whatever and whoever may oppose it. These two
principles would seem so diametrically opposed to each other, that no
man could be at once a Christian and a soldier, any more than he could
ride at once on two horses going in opposite directions, or turn his
back on himself, and at once go forward and backward. Indeed, the cases
where the two professions have been united are rare, and may probably
depend upon some uncommon conjunction of gifts. But there certainly
have been such. Colonel Gardiner was one. General Havelock was another;
and General Howard, who has been surnamed the Havelock of America, is
another.
Oliver Otis Howard was born in Leeds, Maine, Nov. 8th, 1830. His father
was a thrifty and independent farmer. The boy lived at home until he
was ten, when his father dying, an uncle, Hon. John Otis, of Hallowell,
took charge of him. He now attended school, went through Bowdoin
College, and then entered the West Point Academy, graduating there in
1854, fourth in general standing of his class. Beginning, as usual, as
brevet second lieutenant, he was assigned to the ordnance department;
and in 1856 was chief ordnance officer in Florida, during a campaign
against the Indians there. He worked steadily on in his profession,
and at the beginning of the war was assistant professor of mathematics
at West Point, and being desirous to accept the command of a volunteer
regiment from his own State, asked leave from the War Department to
do so, and was refused. On this he resigned his commission, and the
Governor of Maine, in the end of May, 1861, appointed him colonel of
the Third Maine Volunteers, which was the first three years' regiment
from that State.
At Bull Run, he commanded a brigade, being senior colonel on the field,
and for good conduct there, was in the following September commissioned
brigadier-general of volunteers. In December he was placed in General
Sumner's command; and he remained in the Army of the Potomac until the
latter part of September, 1863, when, having risen to the command of
the Eleventh Army Corps, that and Slocum's corps, both under Hooker,
were sent to reinforce the army at Chattanooga.
During this time General Howard was present in all the chief battles of
the Army of the Potomac. At Fair Oaks, on the Peninsula, he was twice
wounded in the right arm, and had to have his arm amputated; but he got
back in season for the next battle--that of the second Bull Run. At
Antietam, at Fredericksburg, at Chancellorsville, he was present and
fought his command to the uttermost. At Gettysburg, Howard's troops
held the key of the position, the cemetery; and a soldier who was in
the field with him in that tremendous fight, in speaking of his extreme
calmness and coolness under fire, said, "General Howard stood there as
if nothing at all was the matter. He never takes stimulants, either.
Most of the officers do, but he never does. He was so calm because
he was a Christian." Colonel Bowman, in speaking of this same trait
in General Howard, testifies to the same point; observing that he is
"careless of exposing his person in battle, to an extent that would be
attributable to rashness or fatalism if it were not known to spring
from religion."
During his campaigns with Sherman he was a most trustworthy and
serviceable commander; singularly cool and fearless in battle, and most
prompt and thorough in the performance of whatever duty was imposed
upon him. After accompanying Sherman in his march for the relief of
Burnside, General Howard served in the Atlanta campaign in command
of the Fourth Army Corps; after the death of General McPherson, he
succeeded him in the important command of the Army of the Tennessee;
and in Sherman's Great March, he was placed in command of the right
wing, one of the two into which Sherman's force was divided, and in
this position served until the end of the war.
General Sherman quickly liked his trusty and helpful subordinate,
and has repeatedly paid high compliments to his soldierly and moral
excellence. At the end of the Chattanooga campaign, for instance, in
reporting to Gen. Grant, he said, "In General Howard throughout I found
a polished and Christian gentleman, exhibiting the highest and most
chivalrous traits of the soldier." Colonel Bowman speaks of General
Howard's practice of Christian observances in the army with a curious
sort of admiration which sufficiently shows how uncommon it was, at
least among officers of high grade. He says:
"General Howard, it is well known, has been pious and exemplary from
his boyhood, was ever faithful and devoted in the discharge of his
religious duties, and this even while a student at West Point. He
carried his religious principles with him into the army, and was guided
and governed by them in all his relations with his officers and men. No
matter who was permitted to share his mess or partake of his repast,
whether the lowest subaltern of his command or General Sherman himself,
no one thought to partake, if General Howard were present, without
first the invocation of the Divine blessing, himself usually leading,
like the father of a family. General Sherman seems greatly to have
admired the Christian character of General Howard, * * * and not only
as a Christian but as a soldier, preferring him and promoting him to
the command of one of his armies." President Lincoln also valued him
very highly, and was his immovable friend.
General Howard's unconditional devotion to duty was very strongly shown
in the use he made of his time while disabled from military duty just
after the loss of his arm. One of his companions in the service has
described how--
"Weak and fainting from hemorrhage and the severe shock his system
had sustained, the next day he started for his home in Maine. He
remained there only two months, during which time he was not idle.
Visiting various localities in his native State, he made patriotic
appeals to the people to come forward and sustain the government. Pale,
emaciated, and with one sleeve tenantless, he stood up before them,
the embodiment of all that is good and true and noble in manhood. He
talked to them as only one truly loyal can talk--as one largely endowed
with that patriotism which is a heritage of New England blood. Modesty,
sincerity, and earnestness characterized his addresses, and his fervent
appeals drew hundreds of recruits around the national standard."
Howard's reply to the swearing teamster was a good instance of kind but
decided reproof, of just the sort that will do good if any will. The
story is this:
"On one occasion, a wagon-master, whose teams were floundering through
the bottomless mud of a Georgia swamp, became exasperated at the
unavoidable delay, and indulged in such a torrent of profanity as can
only be heard in the army or men of his class. General Howard quietly
approached, unperceived by the offender, and was an unwilling listener
to the blasphemous words. The wagon-master, on turning around, saw his
general in close proximity, and made haste to apologize for his profane
outburst, by saying, 'Excuse me, General, I did not know you were
here.' The General, looking a reprimand, replied, 'I would prefer that
you abstain from swearing from a higher and better motive than because
of my presence.'"
In May, 1865, General Howard was placed at the head of the Freedmen's
Bureau; a position for which he was probably the very best man in the
United States, one whose extremely noble and benevolent purpose was
wholly in harmony with the loftiest traits of his own character, and
whose peculiar difficulties were such as he was exactly the man to
encounter, by nature, education and official position.
By imagining one's self to have passed forward in history for a century
or two centuries, and to be taking such a backward perspective view
of the southern rebellion as such an advance would give, any mind of
historic qualities will perceive more clearly than in any other way the
falling off and disappearance of the minor circumstances of the great
struggle, and the few great features that remain--the central facts,
the real meanings of the war. Of all these, that which will remain
most important is, the escape from their modern Egypt of the nation
of the slaves. Lives and deeds of individual men will grow obscure.
The gigantic battles, the terrific novelties, the vast campaigning
combinations of the successive chapters of the war will lose their
present strong colors. Even the fact that part of the white population
of the United States sought in vain to sever their political union
with the rest, will lose its present foremost place in the story;
for it will have assumed the character of an abortive delusion; a
temporary struggle, whose pretended reasons were sophistical and false,
whose real ones were kept out of sight as much as possible, and which
ended in the speedy re-establishment of the power attacked. But the
emancipation of the slaves is an eternal epoch; it marks the point
where the race of one vast continent, after centuries of exile into
another continent and of the most degrading subjection to another race,
is all at once let out into civilization; brought forth from the pens
of beasts, to take a place among the sons of men. Yet more; they are
admitted to take a place among the sons of God; for American slavery,
as if with the devil's own cunning and cruel power, did really not only
exclude the slave from becoming a citizen, but it actually excluded him
from the power of becoming a Christian. The emancipation of the slaves
was even more than the organization of a new nation; for it was the
birth into humanity of a new race.
This view of the case is naturally even now not accepted by large
numbers of persons. It was a matter of course that still larger
numbers should fail to understand it in the day of it. President
Lincoln himself apparently felt more hope than expectation upon the
subject; and all know how long he delayed, how unendurably slow he
seemed to far-sighted lovers of humanity, before he issued his great
proclamation. But there are a few men, who possess at once a powerful
instinct of benevolence and an intuitive comprehension of the present
and the future--qualities which naturally go together, because they
are alike pure, lofty, dependent upon peculiarly noble organizations.
As soon as the progress of the war rendered any considerable number
of freedmen accessible for any permanently useful purpose, societies
began at once to be organized in the North to help the freedman towards
his rightful standing of an intelligent Christian citizenship. The
first of them were organized in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia,
in consequence of the information given by General Sherman, Commodore
Dupont, and the able Treasury Agent, Mr. E. L. Pierce, of the
situation of the freedmen on the Sea Islands of Georgia and South
Carolina. Several societies or "commissions" were established, all
of which--except some ecclesiastical ones--are now operating in
conjunction as "The American Freedmen's Union Commission." The "Bureau
of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands," commonly called the
Freedmen's Bureau, was created by an act of Congress passed in March,
1865, and in form received the freedmen into the express protection and
care of the Government; and its creation was to a considerable extent
if not altogether the result of the efforts of the energetic men who
had established the various private commissions. It is possible that
the Bureau might have been earlier established, had the right man been
found to take charge of it. When General Howard was thought of, at the
conclusion of the war, it was felt that he was in every respect most
suitable. His lofty views of duty; his habits of orderly obedience
and orderly command; the facilities of his high military position for
dealing with the body of assistants it was contemplated to secure from
the army; and above all, his calm, steady, kindly ways, and his rare
characteristic and complete sympathy with the missionary object of
securing a real Christian citizenship for the unfortunate colored race,
were just the qualities that must have been put together if a man was
to have been constructed on purpose for the place.
General Howard has been most earnestly at work in this position ever
since, amid great difficulties and obstructions, but with unfailing
faith and industry; and although it is easy to see how far more of
his great task would have been at this day accomplished had the white
people of the South, and the Government itself helped the Bureau
earnestly and in good faith, yet very great good has already been done.
Doubtless the freed people have in many things been faulty. It would
be strange indeed if a whole race could in the twinkling of an eye,
put off the bad habits burned and ingrained into the very texture of
their bodies and minds, by a heavy tyranny of two centuries and a half.
Generations of freedom must pass before the evils can wholly disappear
that generations of slavery have systematically and powerfully
cultivated. But already, to a very great degree (to use the words of a
recent comprehensive summary of the history of the Bureau,) "labor has
been reorganized, justice has been secured, systems of education * * *
have been established, the transition period from slavery to liberty
has been safely passed, and the freed people have emerged from their
state of bondage into that of the liberty of American citizenship."
The operations of the Bureau and of the Commission which works in union
with it, as a sort of unofficial counterpart--a draught-horse hitched
on outside the thills--have sought four objects for the freedmen, in
the following order: 1. To provide for their temporal wants; for if
they had no food for to-day, and no clothes nor roofs to shelter them,
they would be out of the world before they could learn their letters,
earn a dollar, or learn to obey the law; 2. To promote justice; 3. To
reorganize labor; 4. To provide education.
In his difficult and laborious position, General Howard has had to act
without the help of any public funds, by using temporarily certain
species of abandoned property, and by means of details of officers and
men from the army, who have done their work in the Bureau as part of
their military duty, and without other than their usual pay. The good
accomplished has been rather by the use of influence, by forbearance,
by the exercise of the minimum of absolute authority. But in spite of
the good intentions of Congress, the help of the Government of the
United States, which, so far as its action upon the Freedmen's Bureau
is concerned, is exclusively the executive, has not in any complete
sense been given either to the freedmen themselves, in their toilsome
upward road, nor to those who have been striving to aid them in the
ascent; but it has rather been felt as a cold, sullen and grudging
sufferance, verging even into a pretty distinct manifestation of an
enmity like that of the worse class of unfriendly southern whites, and
showing more than one token of an intention to destroy the Bureau and
leave the freedmen helpless as soon as possible.
General Howard has done all that could be done, against these
obstacles. It is easy to see what constant exercise he must need, of
the Christian virtues of forbearance, patience, kindness, and the
overcoming of evil with good, as well as of the moral qualities of
honor and justice, and the soldierly attainments of order, promptitude
and industry. With some of these he must meet the angry tricks of
white enemies; with some, the pitiful faults--which are misfortunes
rather--faults of the freedmen themselves--idleness, falsehood,
dishonesty, disorder, incapacity, fickleness; with others still, the
inactive resistance of his superiors, and the cumbrous machinery of an
organization which the nature of the case prevents from coming into
good working shape.
In spite of all obstacles, the Missionary General and his Bureau
and the Commission have done much. Up to the first day of 1867,
fourteen hundred schools had been established, with sixteen hundred
and fifty-eight teachers and over ninety thousand pupils; besides
782 Sabbath Schools with over 70,000 pupils; and the freedmen were
then paying towards the support of these schools, out of their own
scanty earnings, after the rate of more than eleven thousand dollars
a month. Within one year, they had accumulated in their savings
bank, $616,802.54. Many of them have bought and possess homesteads
of their own. Their universal obedience to law would be remarkable
in any community in the world, and under such treatment as they have
experienced from their former masters since the war, would have been
simply impossible for the body of freemen in the most law-abiding of
the Northern States. And above all, they are with one accord most
zealous, most diligent and most successful, in laboring to obtain the
religious and intellectual culture which alone can fit them for their
new position, as self-governing citizens of a free country.
The views of intelligent army officers, of the task which General
Howard undertook in accepting this post and of his fitness for it, are
not without interest. Col. Bowman thus describes the work:
"He was placed at the head of a species of Poor Law Board, with vague
powers to define justice and execute loving kindness between four
millions of emancipated slaves and all the rest of mankind. He was to
be not exactly a military commander, nor yet a judge of a Court of
Chancery; but a sort of combination of the religious missionary and
school commissioner, with power to feed and instruct, and this for an
empire half as large as Europe. But few officers of the army would have
had the moral courage to accept such an appointment, and fewer still
were as well fitted to fill it and discharge one-half its complicated
and multifarious duties."
When General Howard, on accepting his new post, advised his old
commander by letter, General Sherman, in a friendly reply, thus wrote:
"I hardly know whether to congratulate you or not, but of one thing you
may rest assured, that you possess my entire confidence, and I cannot
imagine that matters that may involve the future of four millions of
souls could be put in more charitable and more conscientious hands. So
far as man can do, I believe you will, but I fear you have Hercules'
task. God has limited the power of man, and though, in the kindness of
your heart, you would alleviate all the ills of humanity, it is not in
your power; nor is it in your power to fulfill one-tenth part of the
expectations of those who framed the bureau for the freedmen, refugees
and abandoned estates. It is simply impracticable. Yet you can and will
do all the good one man may, and that is all you are called on as a man
and a Christian to do; and to that extent count on me as a friend and
fellow-soldier for counsel and assistance." General Sherman more than
once repeated to others similar testimonies of his faith in General
Howard.
General Howard has not the vast intellect and brilliant genius of
General Sherman, nor the massive strength and immense tenacious will
of General Grant. But he has qualities which are even loftier; namely,
those which are the sure basis for such respect and confidence as
General Sherman's; which alone have enabled him to accomplish what
he has in an enterprise wholly discouraging on any merely human
principles. Grant and Sherman, in what they have done, had at their
backs a people far more intelligent, resolute and wealthy, than those
against whom they warred; but a man like Howard, whose soul opens
upward and takes in the unselfish strength and love and faith of
Almighty God, can do great things for humanity irrespective of money
and majorities.
[Illustration: Wm A Buckingham]