(HOST) His service on the board of the Vermont African-American history project got commentator Bill Mares thinking about the centennial of the death of the founder of Howard University.
(MARES) In the Pine Grove section of Burlington’s Lakeview Cemetery you will see a simple headstone less than a foot high. The inscription reads, O.O. HOWARD, and underneath are two simple stars. This is the grave of Major General Oliver Otis Howard, who died in Burlington just over 100 years ago. During a 44-year career in the Army and beyond, he waged war and peace and racial reconciliation. A biography of him is appropriately entitled "The Sword and the Olive Branch."
Howard was born in Maine in 1830. As a devout Christian he debated whether to go to a seminary or to West Point. Even after graduating 4^th in his West Point class, he thought of becoming a minister. The attack on Ft. Sumpter ended the debate. He fought through the entire Civil War, from Bull Run to Sherman’s march to the sea. He lost an arm at the battle of Seven Oaks. As a commander, his religious beliefs were so open and persistent that, with compliment and snicker alike, he was dubbed, the "Christian general."
At war’s end, based upon his reputation as both hero and humanitarian he was named the first Commissioner of the Freemans’s Bureau, a de facto social service agency established to help freed slaves obtain education, health care and jobs. In this key department of Reconstruction Howard battled Southern intransigence and terror, accusations of politicking in the Bureau, picayune budgets and Pres. Andrew Johnson’s opposition. When he took the job, he wrote, "The rights of the freedman, which are not yet secured to him, are the direct reverse of the wrongs committed against him. I never could detect the shadow of a reason why the color of the skin should impair the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
In the midst of these heavy duties, Howard and a group of others established an all-black college in Washington D.C. which became, in his honor, Howard University. He served as its first president from 1868 to 1874.
Still in uniform, he was sent to the West to fight in the Indian wars. He was able to negotiate a peace settlement with the Apache chief Cochise. But he took up the sword to chase Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe in 1879.
After serving as superintendent of West Point and commander of various military districts in the East , Howard retired to Burlington in 1894. In part this was because one son, an Army regular, had been sent to restore nearby Ft. Ethan Allen as a military post. For his last 15 years Howard was an indefatigable lecturer and fund-raiser for various causes and colleges. He wrote eight books, four for adults and four for children.
It was the establishment of schools under the Freeman’s Bureau that Howard considered one of his greatest accomplishments. Of this, he wrote: "The burden of my efforts… may be condensed into the words: Educate the children. That was the relief needed. Is it not always the relief which in time becomes a permanency?"