Links

Curriculum Vitae Link to H-CivilWar Umpiring page

Scott Stabler - Research - O. O. Howard



General O. O. Howard

My research on General Oliver Otis Howard consumes a great amount of my time. I find general Howard quite fascinating. The last scholar to publish a book on O. O. Howard wrote:

Here was a European-American charged with carrying out official government policy with respect to both African and Native Americans. And Howard reflected on both experiences in his personal and private writings. I missed a great chance for a tri- cultural study; perhaps I still have a job to do. - William McFeely (1994)

When I met the Pulitzer Prize winning historian Bill McFeely in the fall of 1999, I learned he had lost interest in the man he first published a book about in 1968. The "job" McFeely saw for a "tri-cultural study" of his subject more than thirty years ago remains untouched. A tri-cultural study involving not only McFeely's subject, General O.O. Howard, but also late nineteenth century America remains necessary. Placing the events of the Reconstruction Era in the South on a continuum with what happened in the West at the same time offers an opportunity for a revisionist perspective.

Howard's life and military career reflect what happened in the U.S. after the Civil War. Though the work concentrates on his postwar career, the point is not just to write a biography of a historically important American. The focus remains a contextual story that reveals, through Howard, postbellum America's attitudes about religion, education, labor, diplomacy, the role of the military, government policy, and especially race. Throughout his life Howard tried to stop the mistreatment of the weak, but he failed. He failed not due to his own fault, but the failure of America to live up to its creed that "all men are created equal." Despite the good intentions and assimilation efforts of white men like Howard the "Indian" and "Negro" problems proved insoluble in a racist postbellum America.

My manuscript contrasts Euro, African, and Native American experiences in postbellum America. Though the government attempted comparable assimilation initiatives on both African and Native Americans soon after the Civil War, the results were disparate and remain apparent today. Often, in current historical thought, the occurrences in the postbellum American South and West divide into two fully divergent eras in history-which they are not.

Policy from Washington did not solve the major problems that both emancipation and westward expansion brought. As Radical Republicans tried to support black rights in the South, President Andrew Johnson and white Southern racists thwarted their efforts. Over a ten-year period the federal government, in support of the freedmen, tried military occupation, public education, a more equitable court system, a string of laws, a freedmen's Homestead Act, and even the suspension of habeas corpus. These were all relatively new roles for the federal government and they failed. It took another hundred years and a movement led by blacks in the South itself to begin to bring about substantive post-emancipation change.


Howard and Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce

Indian policy faced a similar, nearly unsolvable dilemma--how to keep white settlers off Native lands. As whites encroached on lands promised to American Indian communities, the government often tried to keep settlers out, but when they were unsuccessful or American Indians attacked settlers, the government and its army then served their constituency. As encroachment seemed unstoppable and the possibility of American Indian extinction became accepted as inevitable, and the development of the reservation system evolved with an emphasis on "Christianizing" Native Americans. The government went to great expense and effort to place American Indian nations on lands that often proved unsuitable for agriculture and forced a lifestyle on them that they had little knowledge of or desire to adopt. Federal policy became one of subduing to "save" and it failed.

These courses of action from Washington were not carried out upon a docile, homogeneous people. African and Native Americans both responded, but in different ways. African Americans more readily sought assimilation into Euro-American society, but were hampered. The majority of American Indians in the Western United States wanted separation from Euro-American society, but were inhibited if they did not assimilate. In desiring assimilation, freedmen recognized the importance of education, economics, and the American political system. For the most part, they wanted to participate when they were allowed to do so. Most African Americans embraced the Freedmen's Bureau and took advantage of the opportunities it offered. In contrast, Indian communities often did not welcome Christianity, farming, or formal education. Even when they did welcome these, American Indians were often deprived because the government failed to provide proper protection, provisions, and finances to carry out the policies it promoted.

These processes were set in motion long ago and continue today, but government actions came to a crossroads after the Civil War, when millions were freed from bondage and millions of whites sought "freedom" by pursuing the ideals of Manifest Destiny while encroaching on Native lands. Both "freedoms" led to conflict and a level of government involvement never before seen in a time of "peace." Oliver Otis Howard played a broad and integral role in this historical intersection of the American experience.

Though little has been written on tri-cultural history, historians have written extensively about the Civil War, Reconstruction, the government's Indian policy, Indian wars, racial attitudes, religion, and American education. Nothing has been written about the postbellum era interactions between Indian wars and Reconstruction or place the two eras on a similar chronology.

It is confusing why so little has been written about the man most involved in all these aspects of postbellum America. How many people can say they lent money to Sojourner Truth, received a mandate from Abraham Lincoln, conducted the funeral of William T. Sherman, praised by Cochise and Geronimo, received consolation from Robert E. Lee, chastisement and commendation from Mark Twain, solicited money from Queen Victoria, gave a commencement address with Chief Joseph, had a chapter written about him by his friend Harriet Beecher Stowe, was lauded by her brother Henry Ward Beecher, took a tour of Alaska with John Muir, supported Sarah Winnemucca through marital problems, formed the subject of a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, corresponded regularly with Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, and had William Lloyd Garrison seek his advice? The answer is one, General O. O. Howard.


<-- Back to Stabler Home Page