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History to be proud of

November 29, 2004 1:07 am

City Councilman Matt Kelly loves history and believes he has a valuable family story for the U.S. National Slavery Museum.

A staunch abolitionist on his mother's side not only served as a Union general, but after the Civil War headed up the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands--the federal agency created to help former slaves.

The same relative also is credited with founding Howard University in Washington in 1867 to assure blacks an opportunity for higher education.

Kelly describes Maj. Gen. Oliver Otis Howard as a principled man who put his beliefs into action.

"He stood by his principles and acted on them at a time when it was not popular, frankly," Kelly said in an interview last week.

When Kelly told Vonita W. Foster, the museum's executive director, a bit about his activist ancestor at the opening of the museum's collections display at the University of Mary Washington's Ridderhof Martin Gallery in August, he said she asked to hear more.

They haven't yet met for that purpose, but he said he's willing to share what he knows. Kelly, who earned a history degree from Mary Washington College in 1982, is also willing to do more research if the museum wants his help.

Foster was unavailable for comment last week.

The idea for the U.S. National Slavery Museum was inspired by former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder--the grandson of slaves--while he was on a trip to Goree Island in West Africa during his gubernatorial tenure.

Museum officials say construction of the three-story, 250,000-square-foot facility should start before year's end and be finished in 2007. Artifacts are being gathered, and a clear picture of the precise story it will tell has not yet emerged.

Kelly said Howard's military career and the nation's history could be described similarly--not all flattering.

The Maine native commanded troops in many of the major battles of the Civil War--including Gettysburg, Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg. He lost his right arm in 1862 after getting shot twice at Fair Oaks.

Kelly's family enjoys history and knows a bit about military history. The councilman is a Civil War re-enactor with the 28th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry's Irish Brigade. His father was a career Marine, a brother serves with the Marines in Iraq and his son is serving with a local National Guard unit in Afghanistan.

With that for perspective, Kelly said they recognize Howard "is not viewed as being one of the titans of military genius."

In fairness, however, he said Howard was considered a war hero in his day. It's just that "fate put him in pretty lousy situations at times during the course of the war."

That would include Gettysburg and Chancellorsville, where, Kelly said, Howard's men had a less-than-gallant showing.

"For us, it's just interesting," Kelly said. "Most of what he did that we as a family should be proud of is what he did after the war."

As the war was drawing to a close in March 1865, President Lincoln called upon the Union general and noted abolitionist to head up the Freedmen's Bureau.

Kelly said it was good that Howard had his principled ways--because once Andrew Johnson became president after Lincoln's assassination, Johnson fought hard against the bureau.

Despite that, Kelly said, "Howard did everything he could to push the limits."

The history of the Freedmen's Bureau is one that includes accusations of corruption and limited success in some areas. But Howard had no easy task acclimating a freed people into a society that had been heavily dependent on slave labor.

"The atmosphere in which the Freedmen's Bureau worked was one of hostility," historian John Hope Franklin wrote in his seminal text "From Slavery to Freedom." "Many white Northerners saw the bureau as an expensive agency whose existence could not be justified in time of peace. In the South, opposition to the bureau was vehement."

Franklin goes on to say, however, that "there can be no doubt that the Freedmen's Bureau relieved much suffering among blacks and whites."

Franklin, one of seven members of the slavery museum's board, noted in his book that 15 million rations were issued to blacks that from 1865 to 1869. By 1867, the bureau had staffed 46 hospitals, treated more than 450,000 illnesses and spent more than $2 million on the health of former slaves.

Franklin also credited the bureau with working to protect the rights of blacks in employment and with instituting courts and arbitration boards to oversee problems.

And it pushed to educate ex-slaves. Franklin noted that when the bureau's efforts in education ended in 1870, 4,329 schools had been established and the federal government had provided $5 million for education.

The bureau provided aid to several colleges created at the time, including Hampton Institute and Howard and Fisk universities.

"As a relief agency, it deserves to be ranked with the great efforts of recent depressions and wars," Franklin wrote. "To be sure, the bureau contained corruption and inefficiency, but not enough to prevent it from achieving notable success in ministering to human welfare."

According to Howard University's online archives and other sources, the school grew out of a Nov. 20, 1866, meeting of 10 men--including Howard--at their church in downtown Washington.

The Feb. 1, 2001, edition of the university's Capstone newsletter encapsulates that history. It notes that members of the First Congregational Society initially planned to establish a seminary for African American clergymen, but quickly expanded their plan and created a university.

In an article on the university's military and abolitionist connection, Howard Archivist Clifford L. Muse Jr. wrote that the establishment of the school "exemplifies an important post-Civil War phenomenon--"namely, the founding of historically Black colleges and universities by white Americans who fervently opposed slavery and its invidious accoutrements."

Not only did Oliver Otis Howard take part in this effort, but his brother, Brig. Gen. Charles Howard, served on the schools board of trustees from 1867 to 1876.

Kelly, who applauds Howard's efforts in establishing the university, offered his assessment of the man's efforts as commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau.

"He tried as hard as he could. Was he totally successful? Obviously, you couldn't say he was totally successful," Kelly said.

"There was a moment, and he did his part."

That's where Kelly sees Howard's story helping to tell the story of this nation and the impact of slavery.

"We've come a long way, and we still have a ways to go," he said. "To move on, we need to understand where we've been and how we got where we are."

"I think Oliver is an example of someone who tried to move the process forward," Kelly said. "And he may not have moved it far, but you can't always take giant steps."

Then Kelly shared a quote from 18th-century Irish statesmen Edmund Burke that he finds to be an important personal philosophy: "Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."

To reach PAMELA GOULD: 540/657-9101 pgould@freelancestar.com