WESTWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIER

One would think losing an arm would be a turning point in one’s life. But by the time a surgeon amputated his shattered right arm after the Battle of Fair Oaks on June 1, 1862, Union Brig. Gen. Oliver Otis Howard had already experienced two life-changing events, both while in the Army. Those experiences inspired his nickname and reputation as the “Christian General.”

The 31-year-old general officer would go on to found namesake Howard University in Washington, D.C., negotiate peace with Apache leader Cochise in Arizona Territory and help chase down Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce followers in Montana Territory. Howard would later quarrel with fellow general officer Nelson A. Miles over credit for having captured Joseph in October 1877. But in June 1862 Miles, then a 22-year-old lieutenant colonel, rode into battle by Howard’s side at Fair Oaks, hours before an Army surgeon sawed off the wounded general’s mangled limb. Howard evidently did not lose his sense of humor along with his right arm. When Brig. Gen. Philip Kearny—who had lost his left arm to grapeshot wounds during the 1846–48 Mexican War—visited Howard the next day, the two joked about shopping for gloves together.

Born in Leeds, Maine, on Nov. 8, 1830, Oliver Otis Howard was only 9 when his father died. At age 19 the young man graduated from Bowdoin College and entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He endured harsh peer discipline and hazing at the academy, notably from classmate G.W. Custis Lee, eldest son of West Point Superintendent Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee. The West Point hazing led to fights, but Howard still managed to graduate fourth out of 46 in the Class of 1854 as a brevet second lieutenant of ordnance. (His nemesis, Lee, graduated at the head of the class.) A year later Howard married Elizabeth Waite, with whom he raised seven children.

In 1856, amid the Third Seminole War (1855–58), the Army ordered the lieutenant and his pregnant wife to Fort Brooke, in Tampa, Fla., where they attended the Methodist Church. On the night of May 31, 1857, Howard experienced a religious awakening. So changed was he that over the next four years