Identifier: autobiographyofo02howa (find matches)
Title: Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, major general, United States Army
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Howard, O. O. (Oliver Otis), 1830-1909
Subjects: United States. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands United States -- History Civil War, 1861-1865 Campaigns
Publisher: New York, The Baker & Taylor Company
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Text Appearing Before Image:
I went to Washington before I entered upo my
duties at West Point. The President laid the case
Whittaker, the colored cadet, before me, and asked me
what I would advise. I said at once that I should ad-
vise taking the case away from West Point, where the
social prejudice was strong against a negro cadet. I
suggested the yielding to his desire to have a regu-
lar court-martial and to locate the court in New
York. Whittaker had an able lawyer, a young colored
man by the name of Greener, who was defending him
and who was very strongly of the opinion that Whit-
taker was innocent of any attempt at fraud or deceit.
The case was tried in New York as I recommended,
and the young man was pronounced guilty of doing
himself the injuries in view of putting his cadet com-
rades in a bad light. He was convicted and sentenced
to be discharged the service. On review the Presi-
dent, permitting the young man to tender his resig-
nation, remitted the sentence. After a few weeks the
ugly excitement that grew out of this event disap-
peared altogether.
I went to the Military Academy and assumed com-


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Text Appearing After Image:
GENERAL HOWARD, SUPERINTENDENT UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY and AIDS-DE-CAMPS AT
WEST-POINT, NEW YORK
(To the general's right is his son, Colonel Guy Howard, later killed in action in the Philippine Islands; in the centre, lieutentant C.
E.S. Wood; to extreme left, seated, Captain J.A. Sladen, who was with the general twenty-three years in campaing and battle, and
lost his leg in service, on General Howard's staff.)

Superintendent of the U. S. Military Academy

mand, and was the superintendent for the two years
1881-82. I found it the hardest office to fill that I had ever
had. There is a beautiful outside to the Military Acad-
emy: everything goes on with regularity and order,
and every professor and assistant professor and offi-
cer does his duty as fully as any officer in the service,
but I found at that time a social undercurrent that was
not so pleasant, and that the superintendent had some-
thing to do besides the ordinary work of commanding
a department. A majority of the officers were
strongly opposed to its remaining a department.
They in general wanted to get it back to where it was,
under the charge of the engineers of the army with
an engineer officer as superintendent. Indeed, there
was extraordinary fretting when the first general
officer was assigned. I was the fourth. The opposi-
tion had gathered strength with time. It was not open
,but secret, and consisted in corresp

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