|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
Major General Oliver Otis Howard
In
the summer of 1863, the Eleventh Corps, far more than any other organization
in
the Army of the Potomac, was suffering a crisis of confidence. Wracked by
self-doubt,
rent with petty jealousies and intrigues among the officers, and
lacking
in discipline, it would have taxed the most experienced officer's
ability
to mold it into a reliable fighting unit. As it was, approaching
Gettysburg
the Eleventh was led by the youngest corps commander in the army, and
one
of the least experienced. Oliver O. Howard was born in Leeds, Maine, the son
of
a farmer who died when Oliver was nine. A good student, he graduated from
Maine's
liberal Bowdoin college and was leaning toward a teaching career, when a
congressman
uncle offered him an appointment to West Point. Howard took it, and
graduated
fourth in the Academy's Class of 1854. For the next few years,
however,
he remained undecided about his life's work. He taught mathematics at
his
alma mater while he studied theology under an Episcopalian priest, with the
idea
of going into the ministry. Meanwhile, he married and fathered three
children.
A lieutenant when Fort Sumter fell in April 1861, Howard put aside his
ministerial
plans and devoted himself to the Union cause.
He
was made colonel of the 3rd Maine Regiment of volunteers in June, and lost no
time in taking his regiment to Washington, D.C. to train. There he was quickly
switched to
leadership
of a brigade. By July, within two months of being promoted from
lieutenant,
he was leading a full brigade into battle at First Bull Run.
Although
his brigade was routed along with the rest of the Union army in that
battle,
he was promoted to brigadier general two months later, in September
1861.
In November Howard was given another brigade in the newly organized Army
of
the Potomac, which was made part of the Second Corps. He led it into the
army's
first campaign on the Peninsula in the summer of 1862. There on June 1
Howard
was wounded twice in the right arm leading his brigade in a charge at
Fair
Oaks--the second of the wounds shattered the bone near the elbow and the
arm
had to be amputated. He convalesced for less than two months and was soon
back
at the head of another Second Corps unit, the Philadelphia Brigade, whose
leadership
was vacant--its brigadier had been wounded in the face on the
Peninsula.
In
Howard's first fight with the Philadelphians at Antietam, the brigade--along
with the rest of John Sedgwick's Second Division--was ambushed and destroyed by
a Confederate force in a matter of minutes in the West Woods.
Howard
took control of the tattered division on the field when Sedgwick fell,
wounded
three times. However, he could do little besides preside over the
division's
flight from the field. That fall, he was promoted to major general on
November
29, and continued to lead his division through the Battle of
Fredericksburg
in December. There they were one of the unlucky divisions chosen
for
the futile, bloody assaults thrown against Marye's Heights.
Within
the span of three months, Howard had thus been associated with the Second
Division in two of the worst disasters to befall any such organization in the
history of the
army.
In February 1863 Maj. Gen. Joe Hooker, newly installed at the head of the
Army
of the Potomac, gave his crony Maj. Gen. Dan Sickles command of the Third
Corps.
Howard, who had seniority over Sickles, protested being passed over while
Sickles
got the appointment--after all, Sickles was not even a trained military
man.
The situation was resolved in April 1863, when Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel of the
Eleventh
Corps, already disgruntled because Hooker had been promoted over his
head,
resigned in a huff because his corps, being next to the smallest of the
seven,
was not commensurate with his rank. When the vacancy appeared at the head
of
the Eleventh Corps, Hooker gave Howard the overdue appointment. Just
thirty-two
years old in 1863,
Major
General Oliver O. Howard had demonstrated his ability in the first two years of
the war, but he was not a man gifted with obvious leadership qualities. At five
feet nine inches, slightly built, and pale, "he did not call out from the
troops enthusiastic applause," as Maj.
Thomas
Osborne, his chief of artillery, put it. Osborne described him physically
as
having heavy dark hair--"a profusion of flowing moustache and beard"
according
to another observer--and "undistinguished" eyes, a strong but not an
impressive
man. His empty sleeve gave him some moral weight. But, though Osborne
personally
admired him, he found him to be neither a profound thinker nor an
officer
with "large natural ability." "Howard . . . has nothing marked
about
him,"
wrote Frank Haskell at Gettysburg.
Howard's
activity and his capacity to take note of every detail were impressive,
according to one Captain Winkler. But most of his strengths were interior ones.
He possessed a strong religious conviction that suffused his whole life. Too, he
was, according to Haskell, "a
very
pleasant, well-dressed little gentleman," and his genteel manner was
universally
remarked upon. Osborne called Howard "the highest toned gentleman"
he
had ever known. One orderly in the Eleventh Corps described an early
encounter
with the new chief: when he had held the general's horse to help him
mount,
Howard had said, "Thank you." "Nobody said that to me since I
have been
in
the service," the orderly remarked. Col. Charles Wainwright, chief of
artillery
of the First Corps, commented, "He is the only religious man of high
rank
that I know of in the army and, in the little intercourse I have had with
him,
showed himself the most polished gentleman I have ever met." Again,
Wainwright
wrote, "Howard is brave enough and a most perfect gentleman. He is a
Christian
as well as a man of ability, but there is some doubt as to his having
snap
enough to manage the Germans who require to be ruled with a rod of iron."
Wainwright's
worry that Howard was overmatched with the command of the Eleventh
Corps
was felt by many in the army. It was not a felicitous marriage of the
leader
and the led. To begin with, Howard was not a man who made those around
him
feel at ease. He was an ardent abolitionist at a time when such men were
looked
on as radicals. He had never lost the off-putting mannerisms which had
baited
his Academy classmates--his fidgety gestures and his high shrill voice.
He
was priggish, known disparagingly as a full-time Christian soldier--at West
Point
the story went around that when he met a girl, the first thing he would do
would
be to ask her "if she had reflected on the goodness of God during the past
night."
During the war, he spent Sundays going to hospitals to distribute
religious
tracts, a practice which not only failed to provide moral uplift as he
had
hoped, it created outright resentment in the outfit he was now commanding.
The
Eleventh Corps was largely composed of worldly Germans who had fled
religious
oppression back home, and these men had a deep-seated aversion to
being
prayed over or preached to. Howard's devoutness was only one of the many
unfortunate
aspects of the terrible mismatch between him and his corps. To begin
with,
Howard had replaced the Germans' darling, Franz Sigel. "I fights mit
Sigel!"
had been a proud boast and a recruiting bonanza which had brought
immigrant
Germans into the Union army from every northern state, eager to show
their
solidarity with the ideals of their adopted country.
webmaster@civilwar.morganco.freeservers.com
Let Us Pray Our For Troops In Foreign Lands
The Civil War in Morgan County 2003
Free Southern Graphics at:
http://cybergifs.com/confederate/indexr1.html
Home