Hot-How: Hotchkiss through Howland

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Sources include: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography and Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.


HOTCHKISS, Giles, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)


HOUGH, Reuben, Whitesboro, New York, abolitionist leader, Executive Committee member and founding officer of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society, Utica, New York, October 1836.

(Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971; Minutes, First Annual Meeting of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society, Utica, New York, October 19, 1836)


HOUGH, Stanley, New York, abolitionist leader, editor, newsletter of the New York Anti-Slavery Society (NYASS), Friend of Man, after 1839. 

(Sernett, Milton C. North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002, p. 53; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971)


HOUGHTON, George Hendric (February 1, 1820-November 17, 1897), Protestant Episcopal clergyman, founder and rector of the Church of the Transfiguration in New York City. During the Civil War, he harbored negroes on their way to the Canadian border; he established a war hospital, and during the Draft Riots of 1863 he sheltered hundreds of helpless negro children driven by a mob from the Colored Orphan Asylum at Fifth Avenue and Forty-third Street.  

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, p. 255:

HOUGHTON, GEORGE HENDRIC (February 1, 1820-November 17, 1897), Protestant Episcopal clergyman, founder and rector of the Church of the Transfiguration in New York City, was born at Deerfield, Massachusetts, the son of Edward Clark and Fanny (Smith) Houghton and a descendant of Ralph Houghton who emigrated from England in the middle of the seventeenth century to Massachusetts. At the age of fourteen George Houghton left his Puritan home for New York. After varied experiences, including that of teaching, he entered the University of the City of New York and was graduated in 1842. He studied theology under the direction of William A. Muhlenberg [q.v.] at the same time teaching Greek in St. Paul's College, Flushing, Long Island, of which Muhlenberg was headmaster. The Oxford (High-Church) Movement, which began in England in 1833, made a lasting impression on him. He was ordained deacon in 1845 and priest in 1846, and was Muhlenberg's curate at the Church of the Holy Communion in New York until 1847. Then, after a period of non-parochial activity, when he ministered to the sick and dying in Bellevue Hospital and devoted his time to the underprivileged, he established regular religious services at 48 East Twenty-Fourth Street, the furnishings for the improvised church consisting of borrowed school benches, a wheezy parlor organ, and a reading desk of pine wood. The parish was organized February 12, 1849, as the Church of the Transfiguration in the City of New York. Later a site on Twenty-ninth Street, just east of Fifth A venue, was purchased, and a new building was erected which was first occupied on March 10, 1850. The present building was completed in 1864. Houghton's salary was augmented, beginning in 1850, by five hundred dollars a year, received as professor of Hebrew in the General Theological Seminary.

Houghton responded in every way to the needs of those who called upon him for help. During the Civil War, it is said, he harbored negroes on their way to the Canadian border; he established a war hospital, and during the Draft Riots of 1863 he sheltered hundreds of helpless negro children driven by a mob from the Colored Orphan Asylum at Fifth Avenue and Forty-third Street. Events following the death of the famous comedian, George Holland [q.v.], in 1870, gave Houghton's church its popular name and made it famous throughout America. Joseph Jefferson and Holland's son called on the Reverend William T. Sabine, rector of the Church of the Atonement on Fifth A venue, to make arrangements for Holland's funeral. On learning that Holland had been an actor, Sabine refused to take the service. What followed, Joseph Jefferson recorded in these words: "I paused at the door and said: 'Well, sir, in this dilemma is there no other church to which you can direct me, from which my friend can be buried?' He replied that 'there was a little church around the corner' where I might get it done; to which I answered: 'Then, if this be so, God bless "the little church around the corner," ' and so I left the house" (The Autobiography of Joseph Jefferson, 1890, p. 340). News stories, editorials, and songs on the variety stage gave emphasis to the incident, which endeared the rector to the people of the stage and has ever since made the Little Church around the Corner a shrine to the acting profession, who were known to Houghton thenceforth as "the kindly folk." Houghton's wife was Caroline Graves Anthon, the daughter of John Anthon of New York.

[Geo. Mac Adam, The Little Church Around the Corner (1925); J. W. Houghton, The Houghton Genealogy (1912); New York Times, December 29, 1870, November 18, 1897.]

G.E.S.


HOVEY, Charles Fox, Boston, Massachusetts, 1807-1859, businessman, philanthropist, abolitionist, reformer.  American Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1848-59, Vice President 1848-1855, Counsellor, 1855-1860.  Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.  Hovey was an active supporter of the Women’s Rights Movement.  He helped support the abolitionist movement with significant funding. 

(Abbot; Richard, 1991)


HOWARD, A. G., New York, American Abolition Society.

(Radical Abolitionist, Volume 1, No. 1, New York, August 1855)


HOWARD, Benjamin Chew, 1791-1872, Maryland, statesman, U.S. Congressman.  Manager of the Maryland Society of the American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 276-277; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, p. 275; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 111)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 276-277:

HOWARD, Benjamin Chew, Baltimore county, Maryland, 5 November, 1791; died in Baltimore, Maryland, 6 March, 1872. He was graduated at Princeton in 1809, studied law, and practised in Baltimore. In 1814 he assisted in organizing troops for the defence of Baltimore, and commanded the “mechanical volunteers” at the battle of North Point Oil 12 September of that year. He served in congress in 1829-'33, having been chosen as a Democrat, and again in 1835-'9, when he was chairman of the committee on foreign relations, and drew up its report on the boundary question. From 1843 till 1862 he was reporter of the supreme court of the United States, and in 1861 he was a delegate to the peace congress. Princeton gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1869. He published “Reports of Cases in the Supreme Court of the United States from 1843 till 1855” (Baltimore, 1855). Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


HOWARD, Cecilia, African American, abolitionist.

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 58n40)


HOWARD, Charles, Maryland.  Manager of the Maryland Society of the American Colonization Society (ACS).  Brother-in-law of ACS leader Francis Scott Key. 

(Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 38, 43, 44, 86-87, 192, 204, 209, 242; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961).


HOWARD, Jacob Merritt, 1805-1871, lawyer.  Republican U.S. Senator from Michigan.  U.S. Congressman 1841-1843.  Founding member of Republican Party in 1854.  Elected in 1862.  Served until March 1871.  As a member of the judiciary committee he drafted the first clause of the Thirteenth Amendment. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 277; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 278-279; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 313; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 11, p. 304; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 278-279:

HOWARD, JACOB MERRITT (July 10, 1805-April 2, 1871), congressman and senator from Michigan, was born in Shaftsbury, Vermont, the son of Otis and Polly (Millington) Howard. His education was obtained in the district school at Shaftsbury, the academies 'in Bennington and Brattleboro, and Williams College, from which he graduated in 1830. He began the study of law in Ware, Massachusetts, and was admitted to the bar in 1833 in Detroit, Mich., to which place he had moved in the preceding year. Although he soon became one of the leaders of the bar of Michigan, his chief interest lay in politics. He supported the Whig party until 1854, when he became a Republican. From 1838 to 1871 he held public office almost continuously while his party was in power. In 1838 he was elected to the state legislature as a representative from Wayne County and was active in the enactment of the Revised Laws of that year, in railroad legislation, and in the legislative examination of the state's wildcat banks. He served as a member of Congress from 1841 to 1843.

In 1854 he was one of the leaders of the movement that led to the organization of the Republican party at Jackson on July 6, and was the author of the resolutions that were adopted at that time. In the same year the party nominated and elected him attorney general of Michigan, a position which he held until 1861. From 1862 to 1871 he was a member of the United States Senate. Here he distinguished himself as a radical and outspoken leader. During his first term, he held influential positions on the important committees on the judiciary and on military affairs; as a member of the former committee he drafted the first clause of the Thirteenth Amendment. During the stormy period following the Civil War, he was an outspoken opponent of executive reconstruction and favored extreme punishment for the South. He served during the session of 1865-66 on the joint committee on reconstruction and was assigned to investigate conditions in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. He drew up the report of the committee on military affairs on the removal of Stanton. He also served as chairman of the committee on the Pacific Railroad from the creation of the committee, January 6, 1864, until the end of his term. President Grant offered him the presidency of the Southern claims commission, but this he refused. He died in Detroit as a result of an apoplectic stroke within a month after the expiration of his last term as senator.

Howard was an eloquent speaker, although his style was somewhat ponderous. He appealed to reason rather than to the emotions. He had a wide reading knowledge not only of law and history, but also of literature. He is said to have been an excellent classical scholar, and he knew both English and French literature. In 1848 he published a translation, in two volumes, of M. A. Le-Normand's Historical and Secret Memoirs of the Empress Josephine. He was married, October 8, 1835, to Catharine A. Shaw, whom he had met in Ware, Massachusetts. She died in 1866. He was survived by two daughters and three sons.

[Published sources include: H. G. Howard, In Memoriam: Jacob M. Howard of Mich. (1906) and Civil War Echoes (1907); Calvin Durfee, Williams Biog. Annals (1871); Detroit Free Press, April 3, 5, 1871; editorials in the Detroit Advertiser and Tribune, April 3, 1871, and in the Detroit Daily Post of the same date; R. B. Ross, The Early Bench and Bar of Detroit (1907); American Biographical History . . . Mich. Volume (1878), pt. I, p. 79; H. M. Dilla, The Politics of Mich., 1865-78 (1912); W. C. Harris, Public Life of Zachariah Chandler (1917); Life of Zachariah Chandler (1880), by the members of the Post and Tribune staff, Detroit. The Burton History Collection in the Detroit Public Library has thirty bound volumes of manuscript letters, etc., by Jacob M. Howard.]

J. O. K.


HOWARD, James, Maryland, businessman, railroad president.  First Secretary and founding member of the Maryland State Colonization society in 1831. 

(Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, p. 20)


HOWARD, John Eager, 1752-1826, Maryland, Revolutionary War soldier and hero, federalist Governor and U.S. Senator.  Member of the Baltimore auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 277; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, p. 279; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 70)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 277:

HOWARD, John Eager, soldier, born in Baltimore county, Maryland, 4 June, 1752; died there, 12 October, 1827. His grandfather, Joshua, an officer in the Duke of York's army during the Monmouth rebellion, was the first of the name of Howard that settled in this country. John's father, a wealthy planter, bred him to no profession, but gave him an excellent education under the care of tutors. At the beginning of the Revolution he joined the American army, commanded a company of the flying camp under General Hugh Mercer at the battle of White Plains, 28 October, 1776. Upon the disbanding of his corps in December of this year, he was commissioned major in the 4th Maryland regiment of the line, and was engaged at Germantown and Monmouth. In 1780, as lieutenant-colonel of the 5th Maryland regiment, he fought at Camden under General Horatio Gates, and in the latter part of the year joined the army under General Nathanael Greene. He displayed great gallantry at the battle of Cowpens, 17 January, 1781, and the bayonet-charge under his command secured the American victory. At one time of this day he held the swords of seven British officers, who had surrendered to him. In honor of his services at this battle he received a medal from congress. He materially aided General Greene in effecting his retreat at Guilford Court-House, 15 March, 1781, and at the battle of Hobkirk's Hill, on 15 April, succeeded to the command of the 2d Maryland regiment. At Eutaw Springs, where his command was reduced to thirty men, and he was its only surviving officer, he made a final charge, and was severely wounded. From 1789 till 1792 he was governor of Maryland, and he was U. S. senator in 1796-1803. He declined, in 1796, a seat in Washington's cabinet. In anticipation of war with France, Washington selected him in 1798 as one of his major-generals. During the panic in Baltimore in 1814, subsequent to the capture of Washington by the British troops, he prepared to take the field, and was an earnest opponent of capitulation. In 1816 he was a candidate for vice-president. His wife, MARGARET, was a daughter of Chief-Justice Benjamin Chew. The illustration represents his residence of “Belvedere,” which was in an extensive park, and remained standing until recently. Lafayette was entertained there in 1824. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


HOWARD, Oliver Otis, abolitionist, Union Major General, commander of the 11th Corps of the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the Tennessee, the Right Wing of General Sherman’s March to the Sea, and the Carolinas Campaign, November 1864-April 1865.  Recipient of the Medal of Honor.  Founder and director of the  Freeman’s Bureau, 1865.  Founder of Howard University, Washington, DC. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 278; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, p. 279-281; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 11; Cullum, 1891; U.S. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. 128 volumes Washington, DC: GPO, 1881-1901. Series 1; Warner, 1964.)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, p. 279-281:

HOWARD, OLIVER OTIS (November 8, 1830-October 26, 1909), soldier, was born at Leeds, Maine. His father, Rowland Bailey Howard, a well-to do farmer, was descended from John Howard, one of the founders of Bridgewater, Massachusetts. He died in 1839. His widow, Eliza M. (Otis) Howard, remarried two years later. The boy lived with his uncle, John Otis, at Hallowell, Maine. He attended Monmouth Academy, a school at North Yarmouth, and Bowdoin College, where, supporting himself by teaching during vacations, he graduated in 1850. Entering West Point that summer, he graduated fourth in his class in 1854. After brief service at the Watervliet and Kennebec arsenals, he was made chief of ordnance of the department of Florida, and a year later, promoted to first lieutenant, he returned to West Point an instructor in mathematics, remaining there until June 1861, when he resigned to become colonel of the 3rd Maine Regiment. He was promoted to brigadier-general of volunteers in September 1861 and major-general in 1862, and in 1864 became a brigadier-general in the regular army with brevet rank of major-general.

In Virginia Howard participated in the first battle of Bull Run and the Peninsular campaign, losing his right arm at Fair Oaks. Quickly back in the field, he commanded the rear guard at Second Bull Run, was present at South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg-where he commanded a division-Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. Although his personal bravery at Chancellorsville has never been disputed, the better military critics assign to him much responsibility for the Union reverse in the first day's fighting. He was in command of the XI Corps, composed largely of Germans who, because he had displaced General Sigel, did not like him, and were, in addition, not impressed with his reputation as a great Biblical soldier, "the Havelock of the Army." Holding the right, he was in spite of warning surprised by Jackson and routed. Livermore accuses him of "persistent negligence and blind credulity" (post, p. 151, passim). Bigelow (post, p. 297) admits his neglect and disregard of orders; and Hooker charged him with disobeying an order, which Howard always denied receiving but which Carl Schurz testified that he personally read to Howard (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, III, 1888, pp. 196, 219-20). At Gettysburg he showed a lack of decision and Livermore blames him largely for the loss of the first day's battle. By Halstead he is accused of insubordination (Ibid., 285), but he personally rallied the I Corps in the cemetery on the fir st day and, though there is considerable doubt as to whether he deserves the credit, he received the Thanks of Congress for the selection of that important position.

In September 1863 he was ordered to Tennessee, where he participated in the battles around Chattanooga, and in 1864 he was placed in command of the IV Corps. He took an active part in the Atlanta campaign and in July was given command of the Army and Department of the Tennessee. Thenceforward he commanded the right wing of Sherman's army. His kindly soul was harrowed by the horrors of the march to the sea and northward, and while he justified the harsh treatment of the inhabitants, he opposed and rigorously punished looting and violence.

On May 12, 1865, President Johnson appointed him commissioner of the newly established Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, for which position he had been selected by Lincoln. So far as good intentions, humanitarian passion, and religious enthusiasm were concerned a better choice could not have been made, and the Bureau rendered valuable service in relieving destitution and suffering in its early days; as an executive, however, Howard left much to be desired. The rank and file of lower Bureau officials were unfit or unworthy, and presently the whole service was so honeycombed with fraud, corruption, and inefficiency, so busy with politics looking to negro enfranchisement; and so bent on bringing about the political separation of the negroes and the native whites that its usefulness was hopelessly impaired (House Executive Document 120, 39 Congress, 1 Session). Howard, always inclined to believe the best of any one associated with him, persistently refused to give credence to any charges of misconduct against Bureau officials, declaring all of them based upon race prejudice or political partisanship, and accepted all the reports of his subordinates at their face value, regardless of their patent falsity (Howard, Autobiography, ch. LX; Daily North Carolina Standard, Raleigh; May 23, 1866). In his enthusiasm for the negro he lost his poise. A climax to numerous absurdities into which sentimentality betrayed him was his favorable comment on the notorious South Carolina legislature of 1868 (Daily Morning Chronicle, Washington, D. C., October 1, 1868).

From time to time charges were made against Howard, and in 1870 some of these were investigated by a committee of Congress which exonerated him by a strict party vote (House Report 121, 41 Congress, 2 Session). Later Secretary Belknap preferred charges and Howard at last asked for a court of inquiry. Objecting to that appointed by Belknap, whom he thought hostile to negroes, he was able to persuade Congress to create, by special act, a court which Grant appointed. The charges were failure to establish and enforce a proper system of payments to colored soldiers, responsibility for some minor defalcations of officers, misapplication of public funds, and the transfer of confused and incomplete records. From all of these he was completely exonerated (Proceedings, Findings, and Opinions of the Court of Inquiry ... in the Case of Brigadier-General Oliver O. Howard, 1874).

Dishonest Howard undoubtedly was not, but he had too many irons in the fire. He was buy organizing a Congregational church in Washington and raising funds for it. Seeking to bring in colored members, he precipitated a quarrel which disrupted the congregation. Instrumental in founding Howard University, he became its president in 1869 and gave much of his time to it until 1874 when he resigned. He was a director of the Freedmen's Bank and his name was influential in securing the patronage of the negroes for the venture, which resulted in financial disaster to many of them.

In 1872 Grant sent him as a peace commissioner to the Apache Indians under Cochise, with whom he concluded a treaty. In 1874 he was placed in command of the Department of the Columbia. In 1877 he commanded an expedition against the Nez Perce Indians and in 1878 one against the Bannocks and Piutes. In 1880 he became superintendent at West Point and two years later took command of the Department of the Platte. In 1884 he spent some months in Europe, attending the meetings of the International Y. M. C. A. in Berlin and representing the United States at the French army maneuvers, upon which occasion he was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Promoted major-general in 1886, he was placed in command of the Division of the East, in which post he remained until his retirement in 1894.

After his retirement Howard lived at Burlington, Vermont, until his death, continuing his writings and engaging in religious and educational activities. He was prominent in raising funds for the establishment of Lincoln Memorial University. He actively participated as a Republican speaker in the presidential campaigns of 1896, 1900, and 1904, and commanded the veterans in the inaugural parades which followed. He was the author of Nez Perce Joseph (1881), General Taylor (1892), Isabella of Castile (1894), Fighting for Humanity (1898), Donald's School Days (1899), Henry in the War (1899), Autobiography (1907), My Life and Experiences among Our Hostile Indians (1907), Famous Indian Chiefs I Have Known (1908). In 1881 he translated T. Borel's Count Agenor de Gasparin. He wrote constantly for magazines and newspapers and was much in demand as a lecturer and preacher. In 1893 he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery at Fair Oaks. He was married, February 14, 1855, to Elizabeth Ann Waite of Portland, Maine, who survived him.

[Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard (2 volumes, 1907); War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army); Abner Doubleday, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg (1882); John Bigelow, Jr., The Campaign of Chancellorsville (1910); Papers of the Military History Society of Massachusetts, volume VIII (110); W. R. Livermore, The Story of the Civil War (1913); Laura C. Holloway, Howard:  the Christian Hero (1885); J. M. Hudnut, Commanders of the Army of the Tennessee (1884); Southern Magazine (Baltimore), November 1873; P. S. Peirce, The Freedmen's Bureau (1904); Forty-first Annual Reunion Association Graduates U. S. Military Academy (1910); Military Order of the Loyal Legion of th e U. S., Commandery of the State of Vermont, Circular No. 9, Series of  1909; Who's Who in America, 1908-09; H. Howard, Howard Genealogical (1903); Army and Navy Journal, October 30, 1909; Burlington Daily Free Press, October 27, 1909].

L. G. de R. H.

Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, New York: Appleton, 1888:
 
HOWARD, Oliver Otis, soldier, born in Leeds, Maine, 8 November, 1830. He was graduated at Bowdoin in 1850, and at the U. S. military academy in 1854, became 1st lieutenant and instructor in mathematics in 1854, and resigned in 1861 to take command of the 3d Maine regiment. He commanded a brigade at the first battle of Bull Run, and for gallantry in that engagement was made brigadier-general of volunteers, 3 September, 1861. He was twice wounded at the battle of Fair Oaks, losing his right arm on 1 June, 1862, was on sick-leave for six months, and engaged in recruiting service till September of this year, when he participated in the battle of Antietam, and afterward took General John Sedgwick's division in the 2d corps. In November, 1862, he became major-general of volunteers. He commanded the 11th corps during General Joseph Hooker's operations in the vicinity of Fredericksburg, 2 May, 1863, served at Gettysburg, Lookout Valley, and Missionary Ridge, and was on the expedition for the relief of Knoxville in December, 1863. He was in occupation of Chattanooga from this time till July, 1864, when he was assigned to the Army of the Tennessee in the invasion of Georgia, was engaged at Dalton, Resaca, Adairsville, and Pickett's Mill, where he was again wounded, was at the surrender of Atlanta, and joined in pursuit of the Confederates in Alabama, under General John B. Hood, from 4 October till 13 December, 1864. In the march to the sea and the invasion of the Carolinas he commanded the right wing of General William T. Sherman's army. He became brigadier-general in the U. S. army, 21 December, 1864. He was in command of the Army of the Tennessee, and engaged in all the important battles from 4 .January till 26 April, 1865, occupying Goldsborough, North Carolina, 24 March, 1865, and participating in numerous skirmishes, terminating with the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston at Durham, North Carolina, 26 April, 1865. In March of this year he was brevetted major-general for gallantry at the battle of Ezra Church and the campaigns against Atlanta, Georgia. He was commissioner of the Freedmen's bureau at Washington from March, 1865, till July, 1874, and in that year was assigned to the command of the Department of the Columbia. In 1877 he led the expedition against the Nez Perces Indians, and in 1878 led the campaign against the Bannocks and Piutes. In 1881-'2 he was superintendent of the U. S. military academy. In 1886 General Howard was commissioned major-general, and given command of the division of the Pacific. Bowdoin college gave him the degree of A. M. in 1853, Water field college that of LL. D. in 1865. Shurtleff college the same in 1865, and Gettysburg theological seminary in 1866. He was also made a chevalier of the Legion of honor by the French government in 1884. General Howard was retired in 1894, and in 1898 was active in the movement for National volunteer reserves. He has contributed various articles to magazines, and has published" Donald's School Days" (1879); "Chief Joseph, or the Nez Perces in Peace and War" (1881); and "General Taylor" (in the" Great Commanders" series, New York, 1893).”  Source: Wilson, James Grant, & Fiske, John (Eds.). Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume 1. New York: Appleton, 1888, 1915.


HOWARD, Roland, abolitionist.  Brother of General Oliver Otis Howard. 

(Marching in Proud Company, Civil War Recollections of Oliver Otis Howard [pamphlet, reprint], Anthoensen Press, Portland, ME, 1983)


HOWE, Appleton, Weymouth, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1838-40.


HOWE, Eber Dudley, 1798-1885, abolitionist.  Publisher of the newspaper, Painesville Telegraph, in Painsville, Ohio, which had an anti-slavery editorial policy. Howe was active in the Underground Railroad.


HOWE, Dr. Samuel Gridley, 1801-1876, abolitionist leader, philanthropist, physician, reformer.  Actively participated in the anti-slavery movement.  Free Soil candidate for Congress from Boston in 1846.  From 1851-1853 he edited the anti-slavery newspaper, the Commonwealth.  Active with the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War.  Member of the American Freedman’s Inquiry Commission, 1863. Supported radical abolitionist John Brown. Husband of Julia Ward Howe. 

(Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 43, 56, 117, 181, 204, 214, 238, 241, 268; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 32, 117, 119-120, 213; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 165, 207, 327, 388, 341; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 283; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 296-297; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 453-456; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 11, p. 342)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 296-297:

HOWE, SAMUEL GRIDLEY (November 10, 1801-January 9, 1876), champion of peoples and persons laboring under disability, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to sturdy, middle-class parents. He was a descendant of Abraham How or Howe who settled in Roxbury, Massachusetts, about 1637. His mother, handsome Patty Gridley, came from a martial family. Through her he probably inherited his love of adventure and his soldierly bearing, as well as his beauty of person. His father, Joseph Neals Howe, was notably businesslike and frugal. Deciding to send but one son to college, he chose Sam, because he read aloud the best from the big family Bible; and Brown University, because it was less under Federalist influence than Harvard. The boy graduated in 1821, being more noted for pranks and penalties than for scholarship. He had, however, according to a college contemporary, a mind that was quick, versatile, and inventive, and he saw intuitively and at a glance what should be done (Julia Ward Howe, Memoir, post, p. 83). In 1824 he received the degree of M.D. from Harvard. Being allured by the romantic appeal of Greece, then battling against the Turk, like a crusader he set sail for that land, where, as fighter in its guerrilla warfare, surgeon in its fleet, and helper in reconstructing its devastated country and in ministering to its suffering people, he spent six adventurous years, during one of which he rushed home to plead for help and went back with a shipload of food and clothing. These supplies he distributed wisely, giving them outright to the feeble, but requiring the able-bodied to earn them through labor on public works. This procedure was the index of his future career; his chivalric zeal had become practical. His idea of real charity then and always was far in advance of his time and, together with much else that was momentous and permanently useful in his later life, seemed to spring full-fledged from his active and original brain.

Meanwhile, in 1829, Massachusetts had incorporated a school for the blind and in 1831 Howe was engaged to open it and carry it on. He went again to Europe and inspected such schools there. Incidentally, for bringing American aid and comfort to Polish refugees in Prussia, he was held six weeks in prison, secretly, and under harrowing conditions which profoundly affected him and explain some things in his after career. Returning home, he started the school (August 1832) in his father's house, with six pupils. He is said to have gone about at first blindfolded, the better to comprehend their situation. Having trained them by instrumentalities created by himself and according to his maxim, "Obstacles are things to be overcome," he exhibited their accomplishments, thereby obtaining funds and the gift of the Perkins mansion, whence the name Perkins Institution was derived. Never thereafter did he fail to win friends to his cause or money for his work and for the embossing of his books, which were in the "Boston line" (Roman letter) or "Howe" type. He showed the world that the young blind both could and should be brought up to be economically and socially competent. His annual reports-philosophic common-sense put into clear, pure, and forcible language were widely read. Succeeding educators must needs recur to them for re-inspiration. Horace Mann, one of his board of trustees, allowed himself to say in 1841: "I would rather have built up the Blind Asylum than have written Hamlet" (Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, post, II, 107). In the forty-four years of Dr. Howe's directorship of his school he visited seventeen states in behalf of the education of the blind, and in the 1870's he generously released several of his best teachers to further the American principles of training, then being introduced under Francis Joseph Campbell [q.v.] in London. He awakened the deafblind child, Laura Bridgman, to communication with others, educating her to usefulness and happiness at that time an astounding achievement which, done in the face of general disbelief, became of vast importance to human psychology, education, and hopefulness.

His knight-errantry was extended into many fields. He supported Horace Mann in his fight for better public schools and for normal schools; promoted the use of articulation and of the oral, as against the sign method, for instructing the deaf; so pioneered in behalf of the care and training of children then called idiots that Dr. Walter E. Fernald, one of his successors at the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble Minded Youth, declared these labors to be the chief jewel in his crown. He agitated for prison reform and the aiding of discharged convicts; helped Dorothea Dix by private and public support in her campaign for the humanitarian care ~f the insane; and from 1865 to 1874 he was chairman of the Massachusetts Board of State Charities, the fir st in America, and wrote its annual reports, therein stating his principles which have since become the orthodoxy of charity (F. G. Peabody, Hibbert Journal, post). Though tardy in joining the anti-slavery movement he finally plunged headlong into it, opening his town office as a rallying point. He served for the needed years as chairman and whip of a Boston vigilance committee, self-constituted, to prevent the forcible return South of fugitive slaves. With Julia (Ward) Howe [q.v.], whom he married April 27, 1843, he was co-editor for a while of the anti-slavery paper, The Commonwealth. He even ran for Congress in 1846 as the candidate of the "Conscience" Whigs; but here he suffered defeat, as he did also for reelection to the Boston school committee. Politics, indeed, was no forte of his, while action as a freelance was. Therefore, though much of the time ill from overwork, he threw himself with better success into helping save Kansas to the Free-Soilers. In this enterprise, as in his aiding and abetting the purposes of John Brown, he obeyed conscience rather than law. There are those who cannot excuse him for this "obfuscation," especially for his public letter disclaiming advance knowledge of Brown's raid, and his own subsequent disappearing into Canada. Later, when public excitement had quieted, he  went to Washington and testified before a Senate committee of inquiry regarding his knowledge of the affair. During the Civil War he was an active and useful member of the Sanitary Commission. Secretary Stanton appointed him one of the President's Inquiry Commission. He supported his friend, Senator Sumner, in behalf of negro suffrage as a politic al measure, and the education of freedmen as essential to their citizenship.

In 1866-67 he was protagonist in raising funds and clothing for the suffering Cretans, then waging a losing fight for freedom, and, accompanied by wife and children, again went to Greece to manage the distribution of supplies. He even stole into Crete itself, a hazardous undertaking, and while at Athens opened an industrial school for the Cretan refugees. In 1871, President Grant appointed Howe, Senator Wade of Ohio, and President White of Cornell, commissioners to report on the advisability of the United States' annexing the island of Santo Domingo. After spending about two months there they recommended such action, advice which mo st people considered quixotic. "He was never the hero of his own tale," says Dr. F. H. Hedge (Julia Ward Howe, Memoir, p. 95). He disliked being in the limelight, and his greater services were temporarily overshadowed by his gifted wife who long outlived him. His aggressive personality inspired both love and fear: he could be harsh and exacting or tender and generous. He had a host of friends; his enemies were few.

[F. B. Sanborn, Dr. S. G. Howe, the Philanthropist (1891); Julia Ward Howe, Memoir of Dr. Samuel  Gridley Howe (1876); " The Hero," poem by John Greenleaf Whittier; J. L. Jones, "Samuel Gridley Howe," in Charities Review, December 1897; P roc. at the Celebration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, November 11, 1901 (1902); F. P. Stearns, "Chevalier Howe," in Cambridge Sketches (1905); Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe (2 volumes, 1906-09), ed. by his daughter Laura E. Richards; F. G. Peabody, "A Paladin of Philanthropy," in Hibbert Journal, October 1909; D. W. Howe, Howe Genealogies,  Abraham of Roxbury (1929); J. J. Chapman, Learning and Other Essays (1910); L. E. Richards, Laura Bridgman, The Story of an Opened Door (1928); Boston Transcript, Boston Herald, Springfield Republican, January 10, 1876; see also Dickens' American Notes (1 842) for a short appreciation of Dr. Howe.]

E. E. A.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 283:

HOWE, Samuel Gridley, philanthropist, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 10 November, 1801; died there, 9 January, 1876. He was graduated at Brown in 1821, and at the Harvard medical school in 1824. After completing his studies he went to Greece, where he served as surgeon in the war for the independence in 1824-'7, and then as the head of the regular surgical service, which he established in that country. In 1827 he returned to the United States in order to obtain help for the Greeks when they were threatened with a famine, and later founded a colony on the isthmus of Corinth, but in consequence of prostration by swamp-fever he was obliged in 1830 to leave the country. In 1831, his attention having been called to the need of schools for the blind, for whose education no provision had been made in this country, he again visited Europe in order to study the methods of instruction then in use for the purpose of acquiring information concerning the education of the blind. While in Paris he was made president of the Polish committee. In his efforts to convey and distribute funds for the relief of a detachment of the Polish army that had crossed into Prussia, he was arrested by the Prussian authorities, but, after six weeks' imprisonment, was taken to the French frontier by night and liberated. On his return to Boston in 1832 he gathered several blind pupils at his father's house, and thus gave origin to the school which was afterward known as the Perkins institution, and of which he was the first superintendent, continuing in this office until his death. His greatest achievement in this direction was the education of Laura Bridgman (q. v.). Dr. Howe also took an active part in founding the experimental school for the training of idiots, which resulted in the organization of the Massachusetts school for idiotic and feeble-minded youth in 1851. He was actively engaged in the anti-slavery movement, and was a Free-soil candidate for congress from Boston in 1846. During 1851-'3 he edited the “Commonwealth.” Dr. Howe took an active part in the sanitary movement in behalf of the soldiers during the civil war. In 1867 he again went to Greece as bearer of supplies for the Cretans in their struggle with the Turks, and subsequently edited in Boston “The Cretan.” He was appointed, in 1871, one of the commissioners to visit Santo Domingo and report upon the question of the annexation of that island to the United States, of which he became an earnest advocate. In 1868 he received the degree of LL. D. from Brown. His publications include letters on topics of the time; various reports, especially those of the Massachusetts commissioners of idiots (Boston, 1847-'8); “Historical Sketch of the Greek Revolution” (New York, 1828); and a “Reader for the Blind,” printed in raised characters (1839). See “Memoir of Dr. Samuel G. Howe,” by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe (Boston, 1876). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 283.


HOWE, Julia Ward, 1819-1910, abolitionist, women’s suffrage advocate, social activist, poet, essayist. Author of “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Wife of abolitionist Samuel Gridley Howe, whom she aided in the publishing and editing of the Boston Anti-slavery newspaper, the Commonwealth before the Civil War.

(Clifford, 1979; Grant, 1994; Richards, 1916; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 341-342; Williams, 1999; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 291-293; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 451-453; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 11, p. 331)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 291-293:

HOWE, JULIA WARD (May 27, 1819-October 17, 1910), author, reformer, was born in New York City, the daughter of Samuel Ward [q.v.], a wealthy banker, and Julia Rush (Cutler) Ward, writer of occasional poems. She was a descendant of John Ward of Gloucester, England, one of Cromwell's officers who came to America after the Restoration and settled in Rhode Island. Two of her ancestors, Richard Ward [q.v.] and Samuel Ward [q.v.], were colonial governors of Rhode Island. Her grandfather, Samuel Ward [q.v.], was a distinguished Revolutionary officer. Having abundant means, her parents gave her an excellent education under governesses and in private schools, and her inborn esthetic taste had ample means of cultivation. The Ward house on the corner of Bond Street and Broadway, then very far uptown, contained a picture gallery, and its carefully chosen art strongly influenced the young girl. An urge for self-expression found vent, even in childhood, in poems and romances. The ethical spirit controlled the esthetic, however. Though she chafed because her father's religious scruples delayed her entrance into New York society, when she chose her husband he was not one of the youths with whom she had sung and danced, but a man of unusual moral earnestness, Samuel Gridley Howe [q.v.], almost twenty years her senior. After their marriage in 1843, they spent a year in England, Germany, France, and Italy. Even in her youth, the European prestige of her father's banking firm, together with her own eager interest, had accustomed her to think internationally, and her trip abroad strengthened this habit and began friendships with literary people and leaders of thought in several countries. Her marriage also placed her in the Boston environment of philosophers, poets, and Unitarians; practically all of the prominent Massachusetts intellectuals and reformers of that period became her acquaintances. She herself began to exercise her literary gifts assiduously, and in spite of domestic duties, proficiency in performing which she acquired with some difficulty, and though five children were born to her within twelve years of her marriage, she published anonymously in 1854 her first volume of lyrics, Passion Flowers. This was followed by Words for the Hour (1857), also a volume of poems; A Trip to Cuba (1860) and From the Oak to the Olive (1868), ho.th prose travel sketches; and by a play, The World's Own (1857). None of these productions, notwithstanding the facile music and buoyant spirit of the lyrics, obtained, or indeed merited, general recognition, although The World's Own was produced for a few performances at Wallack's.

It was inevitable that the Abolitionist movement should enlist both the Howes as enthusiastic crusaders. Mrs. Howe helped her husband edit The Commonwealth, an anti-slavery paper, and "Green Peace," their Boston residence, was a center of anti-slavery activity where Theodore Parker, Charles Sumner, and many others gathered. From her war experience came at length a poem which won extraordinary popularity, though it brought her in cash-from the Atlantic -only four dollars. One night, while visiting a camp near Washington, D. C., with the party of Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, too stirred by emotion to sleep, she composed to the rhythm of "John Brown's Body," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," scribbling down in the dense darkness of her tent the lines she could not see. It is probable that much of the popularity of the poem was due to the long rolling cadence of the old folk song, and even more to the hysteria of the moment; but the honors, public and private, showered upon the author, have seldom been equaled in the career of any other American woman.
From 1870, when marriages of daughters and son began the breaking up of the family life completed by Dr. Howe's death in 1876, the major part of her time was given to public service, which extended through the United States and across the sea. No movement or "Cause" in which women were interested, from suffrage, to pure milk for babies, could be launched without her. Her courage, her incisiveness and quickness of repartee, her constructive power, the completeness of her conviction accompanied by a balance of mind, and a sense of humor that disarmed irritation made her the greatest of woman organizers. In her earliest great campaign, where she "had the honor of pleading for the slave when he was a slave" (Reminiscences, p. 444), she was an enthusiastic follower of others; now she became a leader. In February 1868 the New England Woman's Club was formed, one of the earliest of such institutions, and Mrs. Howe was one of its first vice-presidents, and from 1871 to 1910, with the exception of two short intervals, she was its president. In 1868 she allied herself with the woman's suffrage movement, and when the New England Woman Suffrage Association was formed, she became its president. In 1869 this organization issued the call for the meeting in Cleveland at which the American Woman's Suffrage Association was formed, of which she became one of the most active representatives. The movement for peace enlisted her fervid support, and in September 1870 she issued an "Appeal to Womanhood throughout the World," calling for a general congress of women to promote the alliance of different nationalities, "the amicable settlement of international questions," and the general promotion of peace. It was translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Swedish. On December 23, 1870, a meeting was held in New York to arrange for a "World's Congress of Women in behalf of International Peace," at which she made the opening address; the following year the American Branch of the Woman's International Peace Association was formed with Mrs. Howe as president. In the spring of 1872 she went to England, hoping to insure the holding of a woman's peace conference in London, but in this enterprise was unsuccessful. While in England she sat as a delegate at a prison reform congress. As a Unitarian she consistently worked in the interests of liberal religion and occasionally preached sermons from Unitarian pulpits and from those of other denominations. She made addresses before the Massachusetts legislature in the interests of reform, the Boston Radical Club, the Concord School of Philosophy, and in Faneuil Hall, where she plead the cause of the oppressed Greeks.

If lyric poetry was the literary medium of Mrs. Howe's early life, the essay and its vocal counterpart, the lecture, were the more frequently chosen vehicles of expression in her later years. An ineradicable sense of humor alone saved her from being too didactic. She had an unusual command of Italian, Greek, and French. The philosophy of Comte she read in the original, and she had sufficient familiarity with German to grasp the philosophy of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Spinoza. Her love of communicating knowledge led her to embody what she had acquired in addresses and essays. Among her publications are: Memoir of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe (1876); Modern Society (1881), essays on various topics; Margaret Fuller (1883), possibly the be st of her works from the standpoint of literature; Is Polite Society Polite! (1895), essays; From Sunset Ridge: Poems Old and New (1898); Reminiscences (1899); At Sunset (1910). She also aided in editing numerous publications. Potent though her message to her contemporaries undoubtedly was, her influence, so far as it continues, is due largely to the memory of her personality and to the operation of the organizations which she was instrumental in founding and impregnated with her spirit.

Death came to her from pneumonia in her ninety-second year, shortly after she had received an honorary degree from Smith College. Four of her six children survived her-Florence Marion Howe Hall [q.v.], Henry Marion Howe [q.v.], Maud, the wife of John Elliott [q.v.], and Laura Elizabeth, the wife of Henry Richards. The youngest, Samuel, born in 1859, had died in early childhood; the eldest, Julia, wife of Michael Anagnos [q.v.], in 1886.

[L. E. Richards and M. H. Elliott, Julia Ward Howe (2 volumes, 1915); L. E. Richards, Two Noble Lives (copyright 1911); M. H. Elliott, The Eleventh Hour in the Life of Julia Ward Howe (1911); Heroines of Modern Progress (1913); Women Who Have Ennobled Life (1915); Memorial Exercises in Honor of Julia Ward Howe, Held in Symphony Hall, Boston, on Sunday Evening, January 8, 1911 (1911); Bliss Perry, commemorative tribute in Proceedings American Acad. of Arts and Letters, and of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, Volume I (1913).]

M.S.G.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III:

HOWE, Julia Ward, born in New York city, 27 May, 1819, is the daughter of Samuel Ward, a New York banker. Her mother, Julia Rush Ward, was the author of various occasional poems. Julia was carefully educated, partly at home and partly in private schools in New York. Her tutor in German and Latin was Dr. Joseph G. Cogswell. At an early age Miss Ward wrote plays and poems. After her father's death she visited Boston, and met there Dr. Howe, whom she married in 1843. She afterward continued her studies, learned to speak fluently in Italian, French, and Greek, and became a student of Kant, Hegel, Spinoza, Comte, and Fichte. She also wrote philosophical essays, which she read at her house before her literary friends. For some time before the civil war she conducted with her husband the Boston “Commonwealth,” an anti-slavery paper. In 1861, while on a visit to the camps near Washington, with Governor John A. Andrew and other friends, Mrs. Howe wrote the “Battle-Hymn of the Republic,” which soon became popular. She espoused the woman-suffrage movement in 1869, and was one of the founders of the New England women's club, of which she has been president since 1872. She has also presided over several similar associations, including the American woman-suffrage association. In 1872 she was a delegate to the World's prison reform congress in London, and in the same year aided in founding the Woman's peace association there. In 1884-'5 she presided over the Woman's branch of the New Orleans exposition. She has delivered numerous lectures, and has often addressed the Massachusetts legislature in aid of reforms. She has preached in Rome, Italy, Santo Domingo, and from Unitarian pulpits in this country. She has also read lectures at the Concord school of philosophy. Mrs. Howe has published two volumes of poems, entitled “Passion Flowers” (Boston, 1854), and “Words for the Hour” (1857); “The World's Own,” a drama, which was acted at Wallack's theatre, New York, in 1855 (1857); “A trip to Cuba” (1860); “Later Lyrics” (1866); “From the Oak to the Olive” (1868); “Modern Society,” two lectures (1881); and “Life of Margaret Fuller” (1883). She has also edited “Sex and Education,” a reply to Dr. Edward H. Clarke's “Sex and Education” (1874); and wrote for Edwin Booth, in 1858, “Hippolytus,” a tragedy, which has been neither acted nor published.  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III.


HOWE, Timothy Otis, 1816-1883, lawyer, jurist.  Republican U.S. Senator from Wisconsin.  Elected 1861, served until 1879.  During his long career he served on the committees of finance, commerce, pensions, and claims, was one of the earliest advocates of universal emancipation, and in a speech in the senate on 29 May, 1861, advocated in strong terms the negro-suffrage bill for the District of Columbia. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 284; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 297-298; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 11, p. 343; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 297-298:

HOWE, TIMOTHY OTIS (February 24, 1816- March 25, 1883), senator and postmaster general, was born in Livermore, Maine, the son of Betsy (Howard) and Dr. Timothy Howe and the descendant of John Howe, who emigrated from England before 1639 and settled in Sudbury, Massachusetts. He was educated in the common schools and in the Maine Wesleyan Seminary. In 1839 he was admitted to the bar and opened his office at Readfield, Vermont, where he practised until he moved to Green bay, Wisconsin, in 1845. In 1848 he was defeated in the election for Congress, but two years later he was elected judge of the 4th circuit and, by virtue of that office, justice of the state supreme bench, on which he served until 1853, when he resigned to resume his law practice. Being a Whig his sympathies naturally turned to the new Republican party, in which he became candidate for United States senator to succeed Henry Dodge, whose term expired in 1857. He lost the nomination, however, because he had become very unpopular with the large group in Wisconsin that adopted the state sovereignty doctrine, embodied in the Kentucky resolution of 1798, in order to defeat the operation of the Fugitive-Slave Act of 1850. When a fugitive slave, arrested by his master in Milwaukee, was rescued by a mob, composed partly of prominent citizens, the supreme court of Wisconsin, after the prosecution in the United States court (case of Ableman vs. Booth, 21 Howard, 506-66), refused to obey the mandate of the United States Supreme Court. The Wisconsin courts (II Wisconsin Reports, 498-554) and the legislature (General Laws Passed by the Legislature of Wisconsin, 1859, 1859, pp. 247-48) practically nullified the law. Almost alone Howe opposed this defiance of federal authority. In 1861, when public opinion had reversed itself to favor his position in support of the rights of the United States government, he was elected to the Senate, to which he was reelected in 1866 and again in 1872, each time without the formality of a caucus. Upon the death of Chief Justice Chase, President Grant offered him the empty post, but Howe declined because he believed it to be a breach of trust to give the Democratic governor of Wisconsin the opportunity to appoint a Democrat to the vacancy. For the same reason, he refused the appointment as minister to Great Britain. He was one of the earliest advocates of universal emancipation, strongly favored the suffrage bill of the District of Columbia, urged the federal government's right to establish territorial government over the seceded states, spoke vigorously against Andrew Johnson's policy and voted in favor of his conviction, supported the silver bill in 1878, advocated the repeal of the law restricting the number of national banks, and was one of the first to urge the redemption of the green-back currency. Perhaps the best expression of his political opinions is in the pamphlet, Political History ... "The Session" by Henry Brooks Adams, Reviewed by Hon. T.O. Howe (1870), reprinted from the Wisconsin State Journal (Madison) for October 7, 1870. His wife, Linda Ann Haynes, whom he had married December 21, 1841, died in 1881, leaving two children. In that same year President Garfield appointed him as commissioner to the Paris monetary conference, and at the end of the year President Arthur made him postmaster general, in which capacity he served until his death in Kenosha some months later. During the time he was postmaster general, a reduction of postage was accomplished, postal notes were issued, and reform measures vigorously urged.

[J. R. Berryman, History of the Bench and Bar of Wisconsin (1898), Volume I; P. M. Reed, The Bench and Bar of Wisconsin (1882); The Columbian Biographical Directory, Wisconsin Volume (1895); Maurice McKenna, Fond du, lac County, Wisconsin (1912), Volume I; J. B. Winslow, The Story of a Great Court (1912); Report of the Annual Meeting of the Wisconsin State Bar Association Held . . . 1900 (1901); D. W. Howe, Howe Genealogies. ... John Howe of Sudbury and Marlborough, Massachusetts (1929); Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), March 26, 1883; Milwaukee Sentinel, March 26, 1883.]

R.B.W.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 284:

HOWE, Timothy Otis, senator, born in Livermore, Maine, 24 February, 1816; died in Kenosha, Wisconsin, 25 March, 1883. He received a common-school education, working on a farm during his vacations. In 1839 he was admitted to the bar, and began practice in Readfield. He was an ardent Whig and admirer of Henry Clay, and in 1840 was in the legislature, where he was active in debate. Impaired health occasioned his removal to Wisconsin in the latter part of this year, and opening a law-office in Green Bay, then a small village, he continued his residence there throughout his life. He was an unsuccessful candidate for congress in 1848, and two years afterward was elected circuit judge. The circuit judges were also judges of the supreme court, and during part of his term he served as chief justice of the state. Resigning his judgeship in 1855, he resumed his profession, and was an efficient Republican speaker in the canvass of 1856. In the trial that was held to ascertain whether William Boynton or Coles Bashford was lawful governor of Wisconsin, Mr. Howe appeared as Bashford's counsel and gained his case, and his success largely increased his reputation. In 1861 he was elected U. S. senator as a Republican, serving till 1879. During his long career he served on the committees of finance, commerce, pensions, and claims, was one of the earliest advocates of universal emancipation, and in a speech in the senate on 29 May, 1861, advocated in strong terms the negro-suffrage bill for the District of Columbia. He also urged the right of the National government to establish territorial governments over the seceded states. He made able speeches in 1865-'6 against the policy of Andrew Johnson, and voted in favor of his impeachment. He supported the silver bill in 1878, denounced President Hayes's policy regarding civil-service reform in the southern states, and opposed the anti-Chinese bill. On the death of Salmon P. Chase, President Grant offered Judge Howe a judgeship in the supreme court, which he declined. He had left the senate when the third-term question came up, but favored the election of Grant, and in 1880 spoke strongly in its support. In 1881 he was a U. S. delegate to the International monetary conference in Paris. In December, 1881, he was appointed postmaster-general by President Arthur, and, although his term of service was little more than a year, a reduction of postage was effected, postal-notes were issued, and reform measures urged with great force. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 284.


HOWELL, David, 1747-1826, educator, professor of law, acting president of Brown University, abolitionist leader, Providence Society.  Petitioned Congress for implementation of House Resolution of March, 1790, against slavery.

(Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, p. 515; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 57; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 284; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, p. 301)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, p. 301:

HOWELL, DAVID (January 1, 1747-July 30, 1824), Rhode Island jurist, member of the Continental Congress, was born in Morristown, New Jersey, the son of Aaron and Sarah Howell. He received his early education at Hopewell Academy, Hopewell, New Jersey, under the supervision of the Reverend Isaac Eaton, a Baptist clergyman who was the first of that denomination to establish in America a school for the higher education of young men. From Hopewell Howell went to the College of New Jersey, from which he was graduated in 1766. At the Academy he had been a fellow student of the brilliant James Manning [q.v.], and the latter, who had recently assumed the presidency of a new Baptist college in Rhode Island, now invited Howell to share the task of teaching with him. Howell accepted and thus began with Brown University, which was then known as Rhode Island College, a connection which, under varying relationships, was to last throughout his life. In 1769, after three years as tutor, he was given the degree of A.M. and appointed professor of natural philosophy and mathematics. In addition to these subjects, which he was engaged to teach at a salary of £72, he also taught French, German, and Hebrew. He had need to be a scholar of varied abilities, since for some years Manning and he were the only members of the college faculty. He continued as professor until 1779, when, owing to the Revolutionary War, all college exercises were temporarily suspended.

In 1768 he had been admitted to the bar, and in the field of law, which he now entered, he was destined to become exceptionally successful. Rhode Island College gave him the degree of LL.D. in 1793, and from 1790 to 1824 he bore the title of professor of  jurisprudence, but in point of fact he did no more teaching nor lecturing. He continued to be intimately interested in the welfare of the institution, however; from 1773 to 1824 he was a member of the board of fellows, and he was secretary of the corporation from 1780 to 1806. After Manning's death, Howell acted for a brief time (1791-92) as president ad interim, and on several occasions he presided at college commencements. He was a tall, handsome man of imposing bearing, an accomplished scholar, an excellent public speaker, and possessed of a brilliant wit, all of which attributes contributed to his preeminence as a lawyer. He was associate justice of the supreme court of the state from 1786 to 1787, attorney-general in 1789, and United States judge of Rhode Island from 1812 to 1824. From 1782 to 1785 he was a member of Congress under the Confederation, and he was appointed by President Washington a boundary commissioner in connection with the Jay Treaty of 1794. His particular concern in this matter was to assist in determining the true course of the St. Croix River. On September 30, 1770, he was married to Mary Brown, a daughter of Jeremiah Brown, one of the early pastors •of the First Baptist Church of Providence. They had five children, one of whom, Jeremiah, became a United States senator.

[The Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Rhode Island (1881); R. A. Guild, Life, Times, and Correspondence of James Manning, and the Early History of Brown University (1864) and History of Brown University with illustrative Documents (1867); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); G. S. Kimball, Providence in Colonial Times (1912); W. C. Bronson, The History of Brown University, 1764-1914 (1914).]

E. R. B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 284:

HOWELL, David, jurist, born in New Jersey, 1 January, 1747; died in Providence, Rhode Island, 29 July, 1826. He was graduated at Princeton in 1766, and, removing to Rhode Island, was appointed professor of mathematics and natural philosophy in Brown in 1769, also holding the chair of law from 1790 till 1824. In the interval he filled the several offices of member of the Continental congress in 1782-'5, attorney-general in 1789, judge of the supreme court, commissioner for settling the boundaries of the United States, and district attorney, and from 1812 until his death was a district judge of Rhode Island. Brown gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1793. Judge Howell was distinguished for wit, learning, and eloquence, and was a forcible political speaker. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 284.


HOWELL, James Bruen (July 4, 1816- June 17, 1880), pioneer editor, political journalist. A loyal Whig, he early took leadership in that party in Iowa; but with the joining of the issue over the extension of slavery, he was among the first to urge the merging of all free-soil elements in a new organization and signed the call for the convention to organize the Republican party in the state. He was a delegate to the first national convention of the Republicans in 1856. He was an ardent admirer of Lincoln and opposed the administration only when it seemed to falter in its policy regarding slavery.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 302-303; S. M. Clark, "Senator James B. Howell, " Annals of Iowa, April 1894)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 302-303:

HOWELL, JAMES BRUEN (July 4, 1816- June 17, 1880), pioneer editor, political journalist, was born near Morristown, New Jersey, but in 1819 he was taken by his parents, Elias and Eliza Howell, to Licking County, Ohio. His father served in the state Senate and in Congress. James was educated in the Newark, Ohio, schools and at Miami University, where he graduated in 1837. As a student he had a reputation for aggressive leadership. He studied law at Lancaster, Ohio, and was admitted to the bar in 1839. The following year he was an enthusiastic Harrison supporter and served the cause as an unsuccessful candidate for prosecuting attorney. Owing to failing health, in 1841 he took a western horseback journey in the course of which he came to Keosauqua, in Iowa Territory, a town which seemed a promising location for a young lawyer, and in time he settled there. He soon came to rank as one of the leading lawyers of the territory, but abandoned the law to purchase, in 1845, with James H. Cowles, the Des Moines Valley Whig. Three years later the paper was removed to Keokuk, which seemed to offer an opportunity for a larger constituency. In 1854 he and Cowles established a daily called the Whig, rechristened the next year the Gate City. Howell remained the active editor until 1870.

Howell has been termed, not inaptly, the Horace Greeley of Iowa. He had the same intense zeal for a cause, the agitator's conviction that permitted no qualification or concession. He was a hard fighter who gave no quarter and expected none. His editorial style had no adornments but was simple, direct, specific, immediately understandable to all readers, and, in harmony with the standards of the time, not lacking in personalities. "From 1845 to 1865 J. B. Howell was the most potent maker of newspaper opinion in the Des Moines Valley and in Io.va" (S. M. Clark, post, p. 350). A loyal Whig, he early took leadership in that party in Iowa; but with the joining of the issue over the extension of slavery, he was among the first to urge the merging of all free-soil elements in a new organization and signed the call for the convention to organize the Republican party in the state. He was a delegate to the first national convention of the Republicans in 1856 and in the campaign sought in every way to promote party harmony and solidarity. At the Chicago convention, where he was one of the party counselors, he hailed the ticket with enthusiasm and lent every effort for its success. He was an ardent admirer of Lincoln and opposed the administration only when it seemed to falter in its policy regarding slavery. Inevitably he was a pronounced radical in bitter opposition to Johnson's Reconstruction policy. He was a consistent supporter of Grant.

Although Howell sought public offices from time to time, he held but few. In the first state election he was an unsuccessful candidate for district judge. On several occasions his name was before the legislature for the United States senatorship, but he served only to fill out an unexpired term (January 1870-March 1871). His tenure was too brief to provide opportunity for constructive service, but he was active throughout and attracted attention by his vigorous opposition to additional railroad grants. At the end of his te rm he was appointed by Grant a member of the court of Southern claims upon which he served to the completion of its work in 1880. During the last twenty years of his life he labored under serious physical disability as a result of an accident which contributed ultimately to his death. He was married, on November 1, 1842, to Isabella Richards, of Granville, Ohio. Following her death he married, on October 23, 1850, Mary Ann Bowen of Iowa City.

[S. M. Clark, "Senator James B. Howell, " Annals of Iowa, April 1894; D. C. Mott, "Early Iowa Newspapers," Ibid., January 1928; D. E. Clark, History of Senatorial Elections in Iowa (1912); General Catalog of Graduates and Former Students of Miami University ...1809-1909; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); files of the Des Moines Valley Whig and the Gate City, especially the latter for June 18, 19, 20, 1880. ]

E.D.R.


HOWELLS, Henry C., Zanesville, Ohio, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, abolitionist.  Manager, 1833-1837, 1841-1842, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

(Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833)


HOWLAND, Asa, Conway, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1836-40.


HOWLAND, Emily (November 20, 1827-June 29, 1929), Sherwood, Cayuga County, New York, educator, reformer. Opponent of slavery, philanthropist, educator.  Society of Friends, Quaker.  Worked with freed slaves and on Underground Railroad.  Teacher at the Normal School for Colored Girls in Washington, DC, 1857-1859.   

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, p. 312; Who's Who in America, 1928-29; Breault, 1981; Sernett, Milton C. North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002, pp. 264-265, 338-339n29)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, p. 312:

HOWLAND, EMILY (November 20, 1827-June 29, 1929), educator, reformer, was born at Sherwood, New York, the only daughter of Slocum and Hannah (Tallcot) Howland. Her grandparents had been prominent among the Quaker pioneers who settled the eastern shore of Lake Cayuga: some thirty years earlier. Her father was a man of many interests, owning several farms and engaging in the wool and grain trade on the lake. The community observed strict Quaker discipline and discussed in meeting the evils of war, intemperance, and slavery. Women took free part in the discussions and some would buy no goods produced by slave labor. Emily Howland was sent to good local schools and then to Miss Grew's school for girls in Philadelphia. At sixteen she was at home again, still studying and reading whatever came her way. Her father took the National Anti-Slavery Standard and she agonized over slavery. Finally, in 1857, she went to Washington to teach in Miss Miner's normal school for colored girls. During the Civil War she helped organize the Freedman's Village at Camp Todd for refugee slaves, nursing through a smallpox epidemic and teaching school day and night. After the war, her father bought, for her a tract of land in Northumberland County, Virginia. Thither she transported destitute families and there she boldly opened a colored school, visiting later neighboring districts and starting other schools. Her own school she supported for fifty years until the state of Virginia took it over.

Her interest spread rapidly to colored schools throughout the South and to other educational institutions. Many of these she visited and to all she became a generous and understanding friend. In 1871 she helped found the Sherwood Select School (later the Emily Howland School) in her native village and in 1882 she assumed financial responsibility for it, erecting a new building and taking its teachers into her own household, an arrangement which she maintained until 1927, when she relinquished the school to the state. In that year, the University of the State of New York conferred on her the degree of Litt.D. for service to education. She had then been patron, teacher, or director in thirty schools. She had ardor to spare for other causes and a gift for terse and forcible speech. For years she was president of the county Woman's Suffrage Association and coworker with Susan B. Anthony and Anna H. Shaw in the general suffrage movement. She took part in temperance agitation and other enterprises for social betterment and in her last years she was a tireless champion of international peace. From 1891 until her death she was a director of the Aurora National Bank. Genial and humorous, she loved travel, flowers, and gaieties, and deplored the asceticism of her Quaker youth, choosing to attend a Unitarian church whenever it was possible. Yet the causes to which she gave her life were those of which she had first heard as a child at home and in the Friends' meeting-house near Sherwood.

[Emily Howland's letters and diaries are preserved by her niece, Miss Isabel Howland of Sherwood, New York, to whom the writer is indebted for most of the material in this article. For printed sources see Who's Who in America, 1928-29; Genevieve Parkhurst, article in the Pictorial Review, September 1928, inaccurate in some details; Emily Howland, "Early History of Friends in Cayuga County, New York," in Cayuga County Historical Society Collections, II (1882), 49-90; Franklyn Howland, A Brief Genealogy. and Biographical History of Arthur, Henry, and John Howland, and Their Descendants (1885); F. E. Willard and M. A. Livermore, A Woman of the Century (1893); New York Times, June 30, 1929; and Auburn Advertiser-Journal, July 1, 3, 1929.]

L. R. L.



Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.