Yankee Stepfather: General O.O.Howard & the Freedman

by William S. McFeely

The story of a Civil War promise made to slaves―and broken. At the close of the Civil War, Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau―formally, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands―to deal with the question of the place in society of its new black citizens. General Oliver Otis Howard, known both admiringly and derisively as the "Christian General," was given the responsibility of defining the nation's commitment to four million former slaves.

Instructed by Congress to divide lands abandoned to the Union army into forty-acre plots and award them to freedmen, Howard began a program that might have given many families farms of their own. The effort had barely begun when it ran into President Andrew Johnson's policy of returning such lands to former white owners. Soon Howard and his agents were under pressure not to assist the free people, but to coerce them into working for landlords.

And yet, however tarnished the record, the Bureau was still recalled by W. E. B. DuBois for its "bright promise." Yankee Stepfather provides a revealing, and troubling, picture of the complex relationship of African Americans to their government at a crucial juncture in American history.

In a new foreword to this edition, William S. McFeely places his book, first published in 1968, in its place in the scholarship on race relations of the past quarter-century.

Genres: Civil War, History

Paperback

First published April 17, 1994

Reviews

[Davy Bennett]

I read the beginnings of this in 2006.
Going to donate. PB sort of yellowed. Highlighted.

WEB Dubois mentioned here a lot, not a big fan of his communist politics. Read his bio of John Brown, it was interesting but very mediocre.

It is a shame that these early post Civil War starts at emancipation were stymied, and progress towards equality was stunted. Too much too soon, it seems. Even had Lincoln lived, Reconstruction would probably have darkened his legacy.
Still, one can't help but think that things may have turned out better. He was a truly great man.

O O Howard was the Christian General, said with a sneer in many quarters, not in mine.
He looked kind of like Levon Helm, handsome fellow.

Those 40 acre plots of land intended for blacks, that new Prez Andrew Johnson helped get back into the hands of former white owners, remind me of my maternal grandfather's 40 acres. Their family farm in Indiana that came to them after the American Revolution, was lost during the Great Depression. He bought his own farm as an adult, from earnings as a machinist. Disclaimer, I am white.