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The Good Man: The Civil War's "Christian General" and His Fight for Racial Equality. By Gordon L. Weil. (Harpswell, Maine: Arthur McAllister Publishers, 2013. Pp. [x], 203. Paper, $16.95, ISBN 978-1-935496-06-9.)
Oliver Otis Howard is one of the more interesting figures from the Civil War era. Aside from being a devout Christian, a quality that put him in an exclusive club among Civil War generals, he was also one of those people who seemed to be everywhere during the war. Beyond his participation in America's greatest conflict, Howard also played a key role during Reconstruction as head of the Freedmen's Bureau and founder of Howard University. Given his many contributions during the turbulent middle period of the nineteenth century, Howard provides fertile ground for biographers, and Gordon L. Weil is the most recent author to investigate...