Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce War

Oliver Otis Howard thought he was a man of destiny. Chosen to lead the Freedmen's Bureau after the Civil War, the Union Army general was entrusted with the era's most crucial task: helping millions of former slaves claim the rights of citizens. He was energized by the belief that abolition and Reconstruction, the country's great struggles for liberty and equality, were God's plan for himself and the nation.



But as the nation's politics curdled in the 1870s, General Howard exiled himself from...