Howard, Oliver Otis, 1830-1909

Oliver Otis Howard was a Union general during the Civil War who led the Freedmen’s Bureau during the Reconstruction era and was a founder of Howard University.

Born on November 8, 1830, in Leeds, Maine, Howard was educated at several schools and academies, including Bowdoin College, before graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1854. He was commissioned a lieutenant and ordnance officer in the U.S. Army, serving at various arsenals in the 1850s. In 1857, Howard participated in the Seminole Wars in Florida. During his service there, he became an evangelical Christian and his religious faith became a defining characteristic for the rest of his life. Although he considered transitioning to a career in the ministry, Howard remained in the army and served as an instructor in mathematics at West Point during the late 1850s.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Howard became colonel of the Third Maine Infantry Regiment. During the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, he commanded a brigade of Union soldiers. He performed well enough that the War Department promoted him to brigadier general and continued to command the brigade during the Union’s efforts to capture Richmond during the spring and summer of 1862. Howard played a conspicuous role in the Battle of Fair Oaks on June 1, 1862. During the engagement he sustained two serious wounds to his right arm. Army surgeons amputated the arm and he recovered quickly. More than thirty years later—in 1893—Howard received the Medal of Honor for his actions at Fair Oaks.

By November 1862, Howard was back in the field with a promotion to major general and given command of the XI Corps of the Army of the Potomac. At the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863, his corps was badly beaten by a surprise Confederate flank attack. He faced criticism that he had not properly protected his right flank, and that the collapse of his corps had directly led to the overall Union army’s defeat at the battle.

Howard faced additional criticism after the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, when his corps was overwhelmed by Confederate troops on the first day of fighting and he then argued with Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, a very popular and successful battlefield commander, over seniority. His corps fought well at Cemetery Hill on the second and third days of the battle, but Howard’s reputation in the Army of the Potomac was strained if not ruined by questionable performances in two major battles.

Following Gettysburg, Union officials transferred Howard and his XI Corps to Tennessee, where it joined with Major General Henry Slocum’s XII Corps to form the Army of the Cumberland. He and his corps had greater success in the western theater, taking part in a victorious assault against Confederate troops at Chattanooga and generally performing well as part of William Tecumseh Sherman’s advance on Atlanta, Georgia, in the summer of 1864. In the fall of 1864, Sherman gave Howard command of the Army of the Tennessee, passing over the more senior John A. Logan. Sherman’s decision was reportedly due to the fact that Howard was a West Point graduate, while Logan was not.

Immediately following the Civil War, Howard was made commissioner of the Army’s Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands—popularly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau—which had martial authority over many aspects of Reconstruction in the former Confederacy. He helped establish schools for freed people, improved medical services to the poor and displaced, and oversaw the distribution of provisions to impoverished areas of the postwar south. Howard and the Freedmen’s Bureau also had authority to redistribute property and prosecute individuals accused of violating Reconstruction policies. Howard ran into opposition from President Andrew Johnson, who was less sympathetic to the plight of African Americans and objected to the bureau’s broad powers. However, Howard was backed by powerful Radical Republicans in Congress through his tenure over the Freedmen’s Bureau.

In 1866, while commissioner of the bureau, Howard also helped establish a university for African American preachers in Washington, D.C. Originally named the Howard Normal and Theological Institute for the Dducation of Preachers and Teachers, the school was renamed simply Howard University in 1867.

Howard transferred to the American west in 1872, handling Native American relations for the next several years. He oversaw various military campaigns to relocate Indian tribes, such as the Nez Perce, in the northwest. In 1881, he took a new assignment as superintendent of West Point, but stayed only a year before rotating through a series of departmental commands across the United States. He retired in 1894 as a major general in the Regular U.S. Army. Howard died on October 26, 1909, at the age of 78. He was married to Elizabeth Waite and had at least seven children. He is buried in Lakeview Cemetery in Burlington, Vermont.

(Wikipedia; FindaGrave)

Oliver Otis Howard belonged to the following social groups: