Oliver Otis Howard (1830-1909) was born in Leeds, Maine, the son of a farmer who died when he was nine. He attended public schools and in 1850 graduated from Bowdoin College. Although he had taught school, he was undecided about a career, and when an uncle who was a congressman offered him an appointment to West Point, he took it. Therefore, at age nineteen, with a college degree already in hand, he entered the academy's class of 1854. Howard had no problem with his studies at West Point, but he was placed in Coventry for a time during his plebe year for reasons unknown today. His classmates included W. Dorsey Pender, Stephen H. Weed, and Thomas H. Ruger, and by the time of his graduation he numbered G. W. Custis Lee and Jeb Stuart among his closer friends.

After graduation, Howard married and served as a subaltern in the Ordnance Department. In 1857 he returned to West Point as an instructor in mathematics. In the years that followed, he fathered three children, conducted a Bible class for enlisted men and civilians, and studied theology with a local Episcopal priest with the idea of going into the ministry. Religion permeated his life, in much the same way that it had influenced Stonewall Jackson's.

War came, and in June 1861 Howard exchanged his lieutenancy for the colonelcy of the 3d Maine Regiment. This appointment suggests that though he might not have dabbled in politics, he had support from Maine's important politicians. Howard was twenty-nine at this time. A member of the 3d Maine described him then as a "pale young man... slender with earnest eyes, a profusion of flowing moustache and beard." Actually, he was about five feet, nine inches tall and had blue eyes. A later description by Maj. Thomas W. Osborn, his chief of artillery, held him to be of slight build with heavy dark hair and "undistinguished" eyes, a strong but not an impressive man. Frank A. Haskell of the Second Corps wrote that Howard was a "very pleasant, affable, well dressed little gentleman" something that no one would have said of Ewell.

Major Osborn had other things to say of Howard as he saw him in 1865. He wrote that the general "never overcame mannerisms such as fidgety gestures and a shrill voice." On the other hand Osborn termed Howard "the highest toned gentleman" he had ever known. He believed him to be neither a profound thinker like Sherman nor a man with "large natural ability." He did not "call out from his troops the enthusiastic applause that Generals Logan and Hooker do," yet, wrote Osborn, "every officer and man has unbounded confidence in him." This might have been the real Howard of 1865, but it was not necessarily the Howard of 1861.

Howard took the 3d Maine to Washington, D.C., to train it. However, he received an assignment to a brigade command and led his brigade to Manassas only about two months after he resigned his lieutenancy. Howard found the battle particularly offensive because it took place on a Sunday. He became unnerved momentarily by the sights and sounds of the fight, but he responded to his fright by praying to God that he might do his duty, and he claimed that the fear left him, never to return.

Howard became a brigadier general on 3 September 1861. He led a Second Corps brigade in the Peninsular campaign until he fell at Fair Oaks on June 1st, 1862 with two wounds, one of which cost him his right arm. Where he had led the 61st New York Infantry in a charge for which he would receive the Medal of Honor. He returned to Maine to recuperate but did not dally and was back with the army and in command of another Second Corps brigade in time for Second Manassas. He led this brigade at Antietam, and when his division commander, John Sedgwick, was wounded, Howard was there to take command. He continued to command the division at Fredericksburg and became a major general on November 29th, 1862.

In February 1863, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, commander of the Army of the Potomac, assigned his friend Daniel E. Sickles to the command of its Third Corps. Howard and Sickles shared the same promotion date to the grade of brigadier general, but Howard had ranked Sickles as a colonel. Thus, Howard had grounds for protesting that he had seniority over the bumptious Sickles and more right to a corps command than he. Hooker had to give Howard heed and on April 2nd, 1863 appointed him to the command of the Eleventh Corps.

Howard's appointment was an unwelcome surprise to the Eleventh Corps, particularly to its Germans, for they had hoped for the return of their beloved Franz Sigel. In later years, Howard wrote that his reception by the members of the corps was outwardly cordial, but that they did not know him, and there was much dissatisfaction at the removal of Sigel. Howard and his brother and aide, Maj. Charles H. Howard, soon felt that Maj. Gen. Carl Schurz, who ranked just beneath Howard in the corps, was working against him. Truly, the corps' German element could not have felt that it had much in common with such a straitlaced fellow. For one thing, Howard did not drink; he believed alcohol to be a poison "injurious to the mental and moral life of a soldier," and such a view would have gained little support, even among the relatively few native New Englanders in the corps. Apart from that, Howard did not have the easy sense of humor and toleration that would have been helpful in developing empathy with a body of troops.

But Howard gained toleration even if he did not replace Sigel in the Germans' affections. First of all, he retained much of the old corps staff for the time being, particularly Lt. Col. Charles W. Assmussen, the chief of staff, and Lt. Col. Theodore A. Meysenburg, the adjutant general, both of whom were German. Howard came to admire both, even though he wrote of Assmussen, "He drinks some but never lets me see him do so." Maj. Gen. Abner Doubleday, who developed a dislike for Howard at Gettysburg, wrote with jaundiced exaggeration that Howard's staff was made up of ministers and religious people who were looking out for their own interests. This would not have been true of Meysenburg and Assmussen.

Howard did other positive things. Capt. Frederick C. Winklet wrote that the general was an active man who took note of everything. He recalled Howard's visiting a corps bakery where he heard a wagon master swearing. Howard called the man aside--he did not speak to him in front of other soldiers--and told him that it was the first such language that he had heard since coming to the corps and that he did not wish to hear any more. Later in the day another soldier, who was serving as an orderly, told Winklet that when he had held the general's horse to help him mount, Howard had said, "Thank you." The orderly commented, "Nobody said that to me before since I have been in the service."

In later years at least, some of the ranking officers did not care for Howard. Hooker, who had an axe to grind, called him a fraud and deemed Maj. Gen. George Sykes, commander of the Fifth Corps, as much superior to him "as a soldier as night is to day." Brig. Gen. Henry J. Hunt wrote in a private letter, "As to the 'Christian soldier,' I have no great opinion of him, either as a soldier or as head of the Freedmen's Bureau, or as a man."

People called Howard the "Christian Soldier" but not always as a compliment. This was particularly so after the war when Howard gained a high profile and became controversial. The Howard of 1863 was probably closer to the man seen by Col. Charles S. Wainwright, chief of artillery of the First Corps, an elitist from New York and something of a snob. Before Chancellorsville, he 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." After Chancellorsville, Wainwright termed the attacks on Howard as outrageous. Wrote Wainwright, "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, shewed himself the most polished gentleman I have met."