Sword and Olive Branch: Oliver Otis Howard (review)

314CIVIL WAR HISTORY work on The Military Policy. Only just prior to his suicide, on the last night of his life, when he claimed his scheme of military tactics was a failure and therefore his reputation would also vanish, is there evidence that he felt himself to be a personal failure. But this single act by a man about to take his own life is not sufficient evidence for the psychological interpretation the author has drawn, especially when there is a medical record going back several years indicating severe headaches which could have been caused by a brain tumor. The author's psychological view of Upton leads him into a position which weakens the second thème of the biography. He claims that Upton's reforms were motivated in large part by selfish reasons. Hence Upton viewed the rejection of his ideas as personal rejection. But again this reasoning places complex interpretation where a much simpler one is available. For certain reasons—which the author himself develops, namely that Upton grew up in an area of intense bmnnnitnrinnl«iti; and that Upton when young became infatuated with the soldier's life—Upton chose a career in the army and then came to see the army as reform's best agency. Upton perhaps best expressed this view in the introduction to The Military Policy where he suggested that the army is the best and truest protector of the American way of life. But before the army can do the vital job of protecting American institutions it must first be reformed to do its task efficiently and completely. In discussing the role and nature of Upton's ideas in American and western European military history, the author does his most valuable work. He briefly connects Upton's ideas with most relevant changes in the historical development of tactics, strategy, military technology, and civil-military relationships. If evaluating Upton's ideas with the author's yardstick—that Upton was operating from selfish ambition—there is little need to go beyond the author's depth of examination. But if Upton was the sort of professional soldier who was at heart entirely absorbed in what he considered the perfection of the one institution which can protect human civilization, then the ideas of Upton deserve a closer examination . Thomas Schoonover University of Maryland, European Division Sword and Olive Branch: Oliver Otis Howard. By John A. Carpenter. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964. Pp. viii, 379. $6.00.) This is a judicious and carefully documented biography of O. O. Howard , the "Christian general," based primarily upon his voluminous private papers, now at the Bowdoin College Library, and upon army records in the National Archives. A professional military man from his West Point graduation in 1854 until his retirement as major general forty years later, Howard derived both lasting honor and persistent harassment from a role more civilian than military, that of commissioner of the Freedmen's Bu- BOOK REVIEWS315 reau. Almost half of the biography is devoted to the nine post-Civil War years when his responsibilities as commissioner kept him in Washington, and this section includes an excellent survey of the work of the bureau. It is free of the anti-Republican bias and the insensitivity to racism characteristic of a passing phase of Reconstruction historiography, one that marred George R. Bentley's otherwise admirable standard history of the Freedmen's Bureau. The misconception that the bureau functioned as a political tool of Republican politicians bent on exploiting the Negro vote should now be laid to rest Professor Carpenter found no evidence, in either public or private records, to suggest that the bureau was the center of a political network. His portrait of General Howard further discredits such an assumption for it shows him to have been a man incapable of acting the politician and never attempting to become one. His rapid rise in rank, to major general at the age of thirty-two, was a non-political recognition of merit, though he had the usual native son endorsements. During his service in the Army of the Potomac he was above the intrigue so common among his feUow officers; even his private letters, to quote his...