H: Hale through Howe

See below for annotated biographies of Radical Republicans. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.

HALE, John Parker, 1806-1873, New Hampshire, lawyer, statesman, diplomat, U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator.  Member of the anti-slavery Liberty Party.  President of the Free Soil Party, 1852.  Elected to Congress in 1842, he opposed the 21st Rule suppressing anti-slavery petitions to Congress.  Refused to support the annexation of Texas in 1845.  Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1846, he was the first distinctively anti-slavery Senator.  Adamantly opposed slavery for his 16 years in office.  In 1851, served as Counsel in the trial of rescued slave Shadrach.  In 1852, he was nominated for President of the United States, representing the Free Soil Party.  As U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. 

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 8, 35, 51-54, 74, 100-102, 121, 126, 152, 164, 170, 205, 220; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 187, 189, 213, 247; Goodell, 1852, p. 478; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 20, 28, 29, 33-37, 43-46, 51, 60, 63-65, 68, 72, 254n; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 50, 54, 298; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 130, 132; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 33-34; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 105-107; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 9, p. 862; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 105-107:

HALE, JOHN PARKER (March 31, 1806--November 19, 1873), lawyer, politician, diplomat, was born at Rochester, New Hampshire. He was descended from Robert Hale who settled in Charlestown, in Massachusetts, in 1632. His parents were John Parker and Lydia C. (O'Brien) Hale, the latter the daughter of an Irish refugee who had died in the American service during the Revolution. His father was a successful lawyer but his death in 1819 left the family in straitened circumstances and it was due to the courage and self-sacrifice of his mother that John was enabled to attend Phillips Exeter Academy and Bowdoin College, graduating from the latter in 1827. He then studied law  at Rochester and Dover, was admitted to the bar in 1830, and began practice at the latter town, maintaining residence there henceforth. When he left college he had gained a reputation for combined brilliance and laziness. In his profession he came to be known not as a learned, but as a "ready lawyer," possessed of tact and oratorical ability, and remarkably skilled in extricating himself from untenable positions (Bell, post, p. 417). He rose rapidly and made a reputation as a successful jury lawyer. It was doubtless due to this fact, as well as to his democratic principles, that he was an advocate of increasing the powers of the jury and making them judges of the Jaw as well as the fact.

Hale's political career began in 1832 with his election to the state legislature. In 1834 he was appointed United States district attorney and held office until removed by President Tyler in 1841. A year later he was elected to Congress. New Hampshire was a Democratic stronghold and Hale followed conventional doctrines. His early speeches have a somewhat demagogic tone, but he showed independence, and shortly before the end of his term, he proposed a limitation of the area open to slavery should Texas be added to the Union. His attitude on the Texas question finally led to a breach with the party when in January 1845 he addressed a letter to his constituent s denouncing annexation as promoting the interests of slavery and "eminently calculated to provoke the scorn of earth and the judgment of heaven" (Exeter News-Letter, January 20, 1845). In a special convention, the Democrats on February 12 revoked his renomination and solemnly read him out of the party. With the backing of some loyal friends, he proceeded to organize an independent movement. As a result, the New Hampshire legislature in 1846 passed under control of a combination of Whigs and independent Democrats, which on June 9 elected the insurgent Hale to the United States Senate for a six-year term commencing March 4, 1847. It was the most notable anti-slavery success hitherto achieved.

For some time, until joined by Chase and Sumner, Hale occupied a most conspicuous place, and if excluded from all party councils and responsibilities, he was at least free to assail slavery without the restraint which party membership imposed. His most notable speech was probably the one delivered in reply to Webster's address of March 7, 1850, on the territorial question (Congressional Globe, 31 Congress, 1 Session, App. pp. 1054-65). His long speeches, however, are in general inferior to his brief extemporaneous utterances in the course of debate. A voiding the excesses of some anti-slavery advocates, good humored, witty, and eloquent, he was personally popular, although his sallies occasionally provoked outbursts of wrath among the Southern members. It was during his first term in the Senate that he secured the abolition of flogging in the navy, a reform which he had urged from the time of his appearance in the lower house. His further argument that discipline should be more intelligent and humane, that the navy should offer advantages to the ordinary seaman which would make service attractive to the best grade of young men, rewarding good conduct with promotion and better opportunities (Ibid., 32 Congress, 1 Session, p. 449), was decidedly in advance of his time. He constantly urged the abolition of the grog ration as well and this was finally brought about in 1862. He himself considered these reforms the outstanding accomplishments of his Senate career, and in deference to his opinion they are recorded on his monument in the State House yard at Concord. In addition to his anti-slavery activity in the Senate, Hale conducted various platform campaigns on the subject and was a well-known lecturer throughout the North. He also appeared as counsel in cases arising under the Fugitive-Slave law, including the famous Anthony Burns case involving Theodore Parker and other eminent Bostonians. His prominence in the anti-slavery cause led to his nomination for the presidency by the Liberty party in 1847, but he withdrew in favor of Van Buren when the Free-Soil party absorbed the Liberty party in 1848. In 1852 he accepted the nomination of the Free-Soilers and polled 150,000 votes.

On the expiration of his first term in the Senate Hale resumed legal practice and for a short time lived in New York. By 1855, however, the anti-slavery coalition again controlled the New Hampshire legislature and after a prolonged contest he was elected to serve out the unexpired term of Charles G. Atherton, deceased. Three years later he was reelected for a full term. He had become one of the most prominent Republicans in the country, although the influence of his earlier Democratic affiliations was still perceptible, and it was reported that the power of the national party leaders was exerted in his behalf, inasmuch as the legislature was reluctant to break the local precedents which favored rotation. This term, however, added little to his fame, although he was active on the floor and prominent in the adoption of the various measures which at last gave slavery its quietus. During the war he held the chairmanship of the committee on naval affairs. The standard of public morals had relaxed, and in naval matters, to quote Secretary Welles, there had developed a "debauched system of personal and party favoritism" (post, I, 482), especially pernicious in the services of construction and supply. There was a navy-yard in New Hampshire, and Hale was admittedly careless, easy going, accommodating, and not over careful as to the character of his professional and political associations. His friends, who have always insisted on his personal honesty, believed that he was imposed upon by unscrupulous and designing parties, and Secretary Welles, that he was trying to use his chairmanship for personal gain and political advantage. Senators Grimes and Foot both expressed disapproval of his conduct and in 1864 when he was a candidate for reelection the impression was abroad that the leaders in Washington would be glad to see his retirement. Late in 1863 an investigation disclosed that he had accepted a fee from one J. M. Hunt, convicted of fraud against the government, and had appeared on his behalf before the secretary of war. Although exonerated by the Senate judiciary committee of any violation of law, the fact that its report included a bill making such practice illegal in future (Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, I Session, pp. 420, 460, 555) told heavily against him and undoubtedly contributed to a decisive defeat by the Republican caucus at Concord, June 9, 1864. His speech on the propose d bill (Ibid., pp. 559 ff.) does not indicate a keen sense of moral values and lends color to the comment of the Boston Daily Courier, January 1, 1864, that though he did not mean to be dishonest or dishonorable, "his perceptions were befogged by the atmosphere of fraud, corruption and crime surrounding him in the party to which he is attached."

In March 1865 Hale was appointed minister to Spain although he would have preferred the Paris legation. According to Sumner, "President Lincoln selected Hale out of general kindness and good-will to the ' lame ducks,' " and "wished to break his fall" (E. L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Volume IV, 1893, p. 25 5). His training and temperament were not suited for such a post, and he was handicapped by ignorance of the language. As far as can be judged by the somewhat meager records in the Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs his services were not especially significant. In 1869 he became embroiled in a singularly bitter quarrel with H. J. Perry, secretary of the legation, and in addition to the personal questions involved, the minister was charged with serious moral delinquencies involving the Queen of Spain and with having abused his importation franchise. Hale admitted signing certain con1promising documents but pleaded that the secretary had laid them before him without explaining their contents which were in Spanish. He was recalled April 5, 1869, and took leave July 29. His strength had already begun to fail, having been seriously impaired by the famous National Hotel epidemic of 1857, and he spent some further time abroad in a vain que st for health. Returning to New Hampshire in June 1870, he suffered a paralytic stroke soon afterward and his la st years were spent in semi-invalidism. His wife was Lucy Lambert of South Berwick, Maine; his daughter, Lucy Lambert Hale, the wife of William Eaton Chandler [q.v.]. As a crusader in a humanitarian cause Hale ranked among the great men of the day, but his qualities were not those best calculated to produce constructive legislation or successful administration.

[The New Hampshire Historical Society has a considerable collection of letters and miscellaneous manuscripts relating to John P. Hale. Other sources include The Hale Statue (1892), published by the New Hampshire General Court; E. S. Stearns, Genealogy and Family History of the State of New Hampshire (1908), III, 1044-49; I. W. Stuart, Life of Captain Nathan Hale (2nd ed., 1856); C. H. Bell, The Bench and Bar of New Hampshire (1894), pp. 415-18; Diary of Gideon Welles (3 volumes, 1911); G. W. Julian, "A Presidential Candidate of 1852," Century, October 1896; J. H. Ela, " Hon. John P. Hale," Granite Monthly, July 1880; Boston Transcript, New York Tribune, November 20, 1873; Independent Statesman (Concord, New Hampshire), November 27, 1873.]

W.A.R. 

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 33-34:

HALE, John Parker, senator, born in Rochester, New Hampshire, 31 March, 1806; died in Dover, New Hampshire, 19 November, 1873. He studied at Phillips Exeter academy, and was graduated at Bowdoin in 1827. He began his law studies in Rochester with Jeremiah H. Woodman, and continued them with Daniel M. Christie in Dover, where he was admitted to the bar, 20 August, 1830. In March, 1832, he was elected to state house of representatives as a Democrat. On 22 March, 1834, he was appointed U. S. district attorney by President Jackson, was reappointed by President Van Buren, 5 April, 1838, and was removed, 17 June, 1841, by President Tyler on party grounds. On 8 March, 1842, he was elected to congress, and took his seat, 4 December, 1843. He opposed the 21st rule suppressing anti-slavery petitions, but supported Polk and Dallas in the presidential canvass of 1844, and was nominated for re-election on a general ticket with three associates. The New Hampshire legislature, 28 December, 1844, passed resolutions instructing their representatives to vote for the annexation of Texas, and President Polk, in his message of that year, advocated annexation. On 7 January, 1845, Mr. Hale wrote his noted Texas letter, refusing to support annexation. The State convention of his party was re assembled at Concord, 12 February, 1845, and under the lead of Franklin Pierce struck Mr. Hale's name from the ticket, and substituted that of John Woodbury. Mr. Hale was supported as an independent candidate. On 11 March, 1845, three Democratic members were elected, but there was no choice of a fourth. Subsequent trials, with the same result, took place 23 September and 29 November, 1845, and 10 March, 1846. During the repeated contests, Mr. Hale thoroughly canvassed the state. At his North Church meeting in Concord, 5 June, 1845, Mr. Pierce was called out to reply, and the debate is memorable in the political history of New Hampshire. At the election of 10 March, 1846, the Whigs and Independent Democrats also defeated a choice for governor, and elected a majority of the state legislature. On 3 June, 1846, Mr. Hale was elected speaker; on 5 June, the Whig candidate, Anthony Colby, was elected governor; and on 9 June, Mr. Hale was elected U. S. senator for the term to begin 4 March, 1847. In a letter from John G. Whittier, dated Andover, Massachusetts, 3d mo., 18th, 1846, he says of Mr. Hale: “He has succeeded, and his success has broken the spell which has hitherto held reluctant Democracy in the embraces of slavery. The tide of anti-slavery feeling, long held back by the dams and dykes of party, has at last broken over all barriers, and is washing down from your northern mountains upon the slave-cursed south, as if Niagara stretched its foam and thunder along the whole length of Mason and Dixon's line. Let the first wave of that northern flood, as it dashes against the walls of the capitol, bear thither for the first time an anti- slavery senator.” On 20 October, 1847, he was nominated for president by a National liberty convention at Buffalo, with Leicester King, of Ohio, for vice-president, but declined, and supported Mr. Van Buren, who was nominated at the Buffalo convention of 9 August, 1848. On 6 December, 1847, he took his seat in the senate with thirty-two Democrats and twenty-one Whigs, and remained the only distinctively anti-slavery senator until joined by Salmon P. Chase, 3 December, 1849, and by Charles Sumner, 1 December, 1851. Mr. Hale began the agitation of the slavery question almost immediately upon his entrance into the senate, and continued it in frequent speeches during his sixteen years of service in that body. He was an orator of handsome person, clear voice, and winning manners, and his speeches were replete with humor and pathos. His success was due to his powers of natural oratory, which, being exerted against American chattel - slavery, seldom failed to arouse sympathetic sentiments in his audiences. Mr. Hale opposed flogging and the spirit-ration in the navy, and secured the abolition of the former by law of 28 September, 1850, and of the latter by law of 14 July, 1862. He served as counsel in 1851 in the important trials that arose out of the forcible rescue of the fugitive slave Shadrach from the custody of the U. S. marshal in Boston. In 1852 he was nominated at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, by the Free-soil party for president, with George W. Julian as vice-president, and they received 157,685 votes. His first senatorial term ended, and he was succeeded by Charles G. Atherton, a Democrat, on 4 March, 1853, on which day Franklin Pierce was inaugurated president. The following winter Mr. Hale began practising law in New York city. But the repeal of the Missouri compromise measures again overthrew the Democrats of New Hampshire; they failed duly to elect U. S. senators in the legislature of June, 1854, and in March, 1855, they completely lost the state. On 13 June, 1855, James Bell, a Whig, was elected U. S. senator for six years from 3 March, 1855, and Mr. Hale was chosen for the four years of the unexpired term of Mr. Atherton, deceased. On 9 June, 1858, he was re-elected for a full term of six years, which ended on 4 March, 1865. On 10 March, 1865, he was commissioned minister to Spain, and went immediately to Madrid. Mr. Hale was recalled in due course, 5 April, 1869, took leave, 29 July, 1869, and returned home in the summer of 1870. Mr. Hale without sufficient cause, attributed his recall to a quarrel between himself and Horatio J. Perry, his secretary of legation, in the course of which a charge had been made that Mr. Hale's privilege, as minister, of importing free of duty merchandize for his official or personal use, had been exceeded and some goods put upon the market and sold. Mr. Hale's answer was, that he had been misled by a commission-merchant, instigated by Mr. Perry. The latter was removed 28 June, 1869. Mr. Hale had been one of the victims of the “National hotel disease,” and his physical and mental faculties were much impaired for several years before his death. Immediately upon his arrival home he was prostrated by paralysis, and shortly afterward received a fracture of one of the small bones of the leg when thrown down by a runaway horse. In the summer of 1873 his condition was further aggravated by a fall that dislocated his hip. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 33-34.

Chapter: “Vermont and Massachusetts. --John P. Hale. -- Cassius M. Clay,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.

While the struggle for the annexation of Texas by Joint Resolution was in progress, the friends of that measure left no means untried which political chicanery or menace could suggest. The President elect made no concealment of his purpose; and it was distinctly understood that those Democrats who opposed the measure had little to expect from his administration. Even those in New York who had signed the secret circular which alone made Mr. Polk's election possible were soon made to feel the force of that displeasure which the Slave Power usually inflicted on those who resisted its authority. 

But its immediate and most marked demonstration was in New Hampshire, and John P. Hale was its first victim. Though at first successful, its ultimate results were disastrous to the cause and party which prompted it. For it placed Mr. Hale in a far more commanding position than he had ever occupied before, and gave his ready tongue a voice and an audience it could never otherwise have obtained, besides affording an example of successful resistance to partisan tyranny and slaveholding dictation greatly damaging to their pretentious and hitherto unquestioned supremacy.

Mr. Hale, then a member of the House of Representatives, had been nominated by the Democratic Party for re-election. But he had not, like the great body of that party, forgotten its strong anti-Texas testimonies; nor would he, at the bidding of the convention which overslaughed Mr. Van Buren and nominated Mr. Polk; or in the hope of the prospective patronage of the incoming administration, disown that record, and applaud what a few short weeks before had been so vociferously condemned.

Compelled to define his position, he did not hesitate to reaffirm his opposition to the scheme, and to vote against it, though he regarded that declaration and vote as his political death-warrant; a martyrdom from which he evidently expected no resurrection. Indeed, he at once made his arrangements to retire from public life, and to resume his profession in the city of New York; a purpose from which he was with some difficulty dissuaded.
What he apprehended soon transpired. Such honesty of purpose, such fealty to right, such contumacy to party discipline could not be tolerated in the ranks of the exacting Democracy of that State. Early in January Mr. Hale addressed to his constituents a letter on the annexation of Texas. It was an earnest and unequivocal condemnation of the scheme. The reasons given by its advocates in support of the measure he declared to be "eminently calculated to provoke the scorn of earth and the judgment of Heaven "; and he avowed that he could never consent, by any agency of his, to place the country in the attitude of annexing a foreign nation for the avowed purpose of sustaining and perpetuating slavery.

At once the leading Democratic presses of New Hampshire and of the country opened upon him a war of denunciation, calling upon his constituents to rebuke and silence him. The Democratic State Committee immediately issued a call for a convention at Concord on the 12th of February. Franklin Pierce, who had been distinguished in Congress for his fidelity to the Slave Power, addressed the meeting, sharply and bitterly criticising this independent action of Mr. Hale, and defending the policy of annexation. He admitted that he would rather have Texas annexed as free territory, but he exclaimed, "Give it to us with slavery, rather than not have it, and have it now." And such an avowal was consistently applauded by the same convention which had just voted down, by "an emphatic No," the proposition that the meeting should be opened with prayer.

Stephen S. Foster, being present, inquired if he might be permitted “to set the speaker right in a few of his misstatements." A violent clamor at once arose against permission. The chairman decided that none but delegates could speak; and Mr. Foster took his seat, with the declaration: " I consider myself, in common with every man in the house, insulted by the remarks of the gentleman who has just taken his seat." And that convention of the same party which had a few months before pronounced against the annexation scheme, and whose chief organ had declared it to be “black as ink and bitter as hell," at once changed front on this very issue, and by a unanimous vote struck Mr. Hale's name from the ticket on which it had so recently inscribed it, and placed in its stead that of an obscure politician.
But many of Mr. Hale's constituents were more hopeful than their leader; at least, they were less resigned and less disposed to submit to defeat and death. Under the lead of Amos Tuck, who had already taken an active part in giving expression and direction to the popular disfavor against such high-handed tyranny, they at once prepared for action. In consequence of 'their earnest and vigorous proceedings, even without much aid from Mr. Hale, who deemed all resistance to the decrees of the party hopeless, the Democratic candidate lacked a thousand votes of a majority. While this result surprised and exasperated the Democratic leaders, it greatly encouraged Mr. Hale and his friends. Stimulated by their success, and continuing the struggle with increased determination and vigor, they established at the State capital the “Independent Democrat," under the editorial control of George G. Fogg. It was conducted with signal ability and tact, rendered essential service, and contributed largely to the triumph of this first successful revolt against the iron despotism of the Slave Power.

In the next election Mr. Hale participated. He canvassed the State, delivering speeches, in which he brought into full play the capacities and characteristics of his peculiar, versatile, and popular eloquence. Great excitement pervaded the State, and crowds thronged to hear him. But the Democratic leaders were indignant at his continued contumacy, and deeply chagrined at his manifest success with the people. These feelings found voice at a meeting held at the capital the first week of June. During that week the legislature commenced its session, and the religious and benevolent associations of the State held their anniversaries. Mr. Hale was expected to address a meeting at the Old North Church. Unwilling that his speech should be heard, as it probably would be, by the political and religious representatives of the State then assembled, the Democratic leaders determined that it should be replied to on the spot. Franklin Pierce was selected for that purpose. Aware that he was addressing many men of large intelligence and influence, and that his words would be sharply criticised by him under whose lead his name had been stricken from the ticket, Mr. Hale spoke with calmness, dignity, and effect. Those who listened to him could not but feel, whether they agreed with him or not, that he had been actuated by conscientious convictions and a high sense of public duty.

Mr. Pierce had noted, with the quick instincts of an adroit politician, the marked effects produced by Mr. Hale's manly and temperate vindication of his principles and position. Evidently in a towering passion, he spoke under the deepest excitement. He was domineering and insulting in manner, and bitter and sarcastic in the tone and tenor of his remarks. Mr. Hale replied briefly, but pertinently and effectively. He closed his triumphant vindication of his motives, opinions, and purposes against the aspersions of his bitter enemy with these words: “I expected to be called ambitious, to have my name cast out as evil, to be traduced and misrepresented. I have not been disappointed. But if things have come to this condition, that conscience and a sacred regard for truth and duty are to be publicly held up to ridicule, and scouted at 'Without rebuke, as has just been done here, it matters little whether we are annexed to Texas or Texas is annexed to us. I may be permitted to say that the measure of my ambition will be full if my earthly career shall be finished and my bones are laid beneath the soil of New Hampshire, and, when my wife and children shall repair to my grave to drop the tear of affection to my memory, they may read on my tombstone: 'He who lies beneath surrendered office and place and power, rather than bow down and worship slavery.' "

At the second election the Democratic candidate lacked some fifteen hundred votes necessary to an election. Several other attempts were made, in which the “Independent Democrats," though they failed of electing their own, succeeded in defeating the Democratic candidate, and in holding the balance of power. In the election of 1846, Mr. Hale was chosen a member of the legislature, was made Speaker, and subsequently elected to the Senate of the United States. The State was then subdivided into congressional districts, and Mr. Tuck was nominated to fill the seat Mr. Hale had occupied in the national House of Representatives. As a majority of votes was necessary for an election, no choice was effected during the whole of the XXIXth Congress. But in July, 1847, by a coalition between the Whigs and " Independent Democrats “in the first and third districts, Mr. Tuck was chosen in the former and General James Wilson in the latter. Mr. Tuck served six years in Congress, and made an honorable record. His chief distinction, and perhaps his chief service, however, grew out of his bold and wise leadership in that first and successful assault upon the party which had for years controlled the State with iron sway; beating down the very Gibraltar of the Northern Democracy, and making it one of the leading and most reliable States in opposition to the Slave Power.

And if merit is due to any actors in the great struggle now under review, surely no inconsiderable share belongs to those who, in that dark night, dared to beard the lion in his Northern lair, and strike for freedom with the odds so fearfully against them. Nor is the nation's debt of gratitude to Mr. Hale small for his long, brave fight in the Senate, against the scorn and contumely of the slaveholding majority. For if he did not then proclaim the full and perfect evangel of liberty, his was certainly the voice of one crying in the wilderness, preparing the way of complete deliverance. As his successful resistance to party and slaveholding tyranny broke the spell of its assumed invincibility, and encouraged others to go and I do likewise, so his ready eloquence and wit, his brilliant repartee and unfailing good-humor, did much to familiarize the country with the subject, and to call attention to its facts and principles, which perhaps a sterner advocate would have failed to effect.
Source:  Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 1.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 624-628.



HARLAN, James, 1820-1899, statesman.  Whig U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Elected Senator in 1855 representing Iowa.  Re-elected, served until 1865, when appointed Secretary of the Interior by President Lincoln.  Re-elected to Senate in 1866, served until 1873. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 83-84; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 268; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 10, p. 94; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 268;

HARLAN, JAMES (August 26, 1820-October 5, 1899), United States senator, secretary of the interior, was a product of the frontier, of its opportunity and of its limitations. He was descended from George Harland, a Quaker, who emigrated from the vicinity of Durham, England, to County Down, Ireland, and thence in 1687 to America, settling finally in Chester County, Pennsylvania. His parents, Silas and Mary (Conley) Harlan, natives of Pennsylvania and Maryland respectively, were married in Ohio and then joined the stream of western migration, locating in Clark County, Illinois, where he was born. Four years later the family removed to the "New Discovery" in Parke County, Ind., a typical clearing settlement. Monotonous toil was relieved chiefly by visits of Methodist circuit riders who made the Harlan home their "preaching place." The frontier youth supplemented his log-school instruction by books secured from a county library. After teaching district school he attended a local "seminary" and entered Indiana Asbury (later DePauw) University in 1841. College life was interspersed by a trip to Iowa and a term of school teaching in Missouri. As a student his interest in politics was already marked; he was an ardent Whig. In 1845, the year that he took his degree, he was married to Ann Eliza Peck.

The young couple, true to type, sought the pioneer life in Iowa where Harlan became principal of the Iowa City College. Almost immediately his long and stormy political career began. In the first state election, in 1847, he was chosen superintendent of public instruction on the Whig ticket, but the election was declared illegal and in the contest to fill the vacancy he was defeated by methods that he regarded as highly irregular. Following this unfortunate experience, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1850 and in the same year declined the Whig nomination for governor. Before full establishment in his new profession, he was called to head the Iowa Conference University (now Iowa Wesleyan), which he served as president from 1853 to 1855. Under most discouraging conditions, both financial and academic, he was laying the foundations of one of the earliest trans-Mississippi colleges when the Free-Soil agitation put an end to his educational activities and career.

From the beginnings of the Free-Soil movement Harlan had been an active promoter. Put forward by friends as the new party's candidate for the United States Senate he was elected, in 1855, by a rump legislature after one house had formally adjourned. This irregularity led to the vacating of his seat in January 1857. He was promptly returned by a sympathetic legislature and in 1860 was the unanimous Republican choice for a second term. During his first senatorial contest he built up a personal organization throughout the state which he utilized effectively in later contests. As senator he concentrated on Western measures, homesteads, college land grants, and especially the Pacific railroad act, which he personally directed. He gave loyal support to the war measures of the administration and was intimate with President Lincoln; his daughter later married Robert Todd Lincoln [q.v.]. At the beginning of Lincoln's second term Harlan became secretary of the interior. This position was the disastrous turning-point of his career. Departmental policies created bitter enmities and led to charges of improper appointments and of corruption in the disposal of Indian and railroad lands. These charges persisted, although, according to one of Harlan's biographers, "each of the accusations was fairly and squarely met by facts which were a matter of record, and proven to be without foundation" (Brigham, post, p. 250). The most notable of his many dismissals in pursuance of his policy of economy was that of Walt Whitman [q.v.] from a clerkship in the Indian Office (Ibid., p. 208). The reconstruction contest caused a break between Harlan and Johnson, and Harlan resigned his portfolio in July 1866.

Before leaving the cabinet he had been making plans for a return to the Senate, and he had so influential a following that he was elected in 1866, but at the cost of the friendship of Samuel J. Kirkwood and James W. Grimes [qq.v.]. Upon returning to the Senate he was definitely aligned with the radical administration group and his most notable acts were his support of Johnson's impeachment and his spirited defense of Grant's Santo Dominican policy. The growing cleavage in the party, which was to culminate in the Liberal Republican movement, was reflected in the Iowa senatorial contest in January 1872 in which Harlan's opponents combined so effectively that he was defeated by William B. Allison [q.v.]. This defeat ended his official career at a comparatively early age. Though candidate for senator and governor at various times, he was never again successful in an election. His only remaining official service was as a member of the second court of Alabama claims, 1882-86. He was an active member of the Methodist Church, and the support that he received from Iowa Methodists occasionally figured in political controversies. He was president of Iowa Wesleyan again for a short time in 1869-70. Tall, dignified, impressive looking, Harlan was strong of body and of will. He was a zealous partisan and a persistent fighter, tenacious of conviction whether based upon reason or prejudice.

[The Harlan papers, including autobiographical sketch of early years and a large correspondence, are in the possession of Harlan's daughter, Mrs. Robert Todd Lincoln, and were used and quoted extensively in Johnson Brigham, James Harlan (1913). See also Congressional Globe, 34-42 Congress; Report of the Sec. of the Interior, 1865; Diary of Gideon Welles (3 volumes, 1911); D. E. Clark, History of Senatorial Elections in Iowa (1912); A.H. Harlan, History and Genealogy of the Harlan Family (1914); Historical Sketch and Alumni Record of Iowa Wesleyan Coll. (1917); E. H. Stiles, Recollections and Sketches of Notable Lawyers and Public Men of Iowa (1916); Christian Advocate, October 19, 1899; Iowa State Register (Des Moines), October 6, 1899.)

E. D.R.

Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume III, pp. 83-84;

HARLAN, James, statesman, born in Clarke county, Ind., 26 August, 1820; died in Des Moines, Iowa, 5 October, 1899. He was graduated at the Indiana Asbury university, held the office of superintendent of public instruction, and was president of Iowa Wesleyan university. He was elected to the U. S. senate in 1855 as a Whig, and served as chairman of the committee on public lands, but his seat was declared vacant on a technicality on 12 January, 1857. On the 17th of the same month he was re-elected for the term ending in 1861, and in the latter year was a delegate to the Peace convention. He was re-elected to the senate for the term ending in 1867, but resigned in 1865, having been appointed by President Lincoln secretary of the interior. He was again elected to the senate in 1866, and was a delegate to the Philadelphia loyalists' convention of that year. He was chairman of the committee on the District of Columbia and Indian affairs, and also served on those on foreign relations, agriculture, and the Pacific railroad. In 1869 he was appointed president of the Iowa university. After leaving the senate in 1873 he became editor of the “Washington Chronicle.” From 1882 till 1885 he was presiding judge of the court of commissioners of Alabama claims. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 83-84.



HAMILTON, Andrew Jackson,  union general, U.S. Representative from Texas, appointed by President Lincoln Military Governor of Texas in 1862; appointed provisional Governor by President Johnson in 1865; justice of the supreme court of Texas in 1866.

Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress;

HAMILTON, ANDREW JACKSON, (brother of Morgan Calvin Hamilton), a Representative from Texas; born in Huntsville, Madison County, Alabama, January 28, 1815; attended the common schools; studied law; was admitted to the bar in Talladega, Alabama, in 1841; moved to Texas and commenced the practice of law in Lagrange, Fayette County, in 1846; attorney general of the State in 1850; member of the State house of representatives 1851-1853; elected as an Independent Democrat to the Thirty-sixth Congress (March 4, 1859-March 3, 1861); was not a candidate for renomination in 1860; moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1862; during the Civil War was commissioned brigadier general of Volunteers November 14, 1862; appointed by President Lincoln Military Governor of Texas in 1862; appointed provisional Governor by President Johnson in 1865; justice of the supreme court of Texas in 1866; delegate to the Loyalist convention at Philadelphia in 1866; unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Texas in 1869; died in Austin, Texas, April 11, 1875; interment in Oakwood Cemetery.

Hamilton was born in Huntsville, Alabama, on January 28, 1815.  He went to law school and was eventually admitted to the bar in Talladega, Alabama. In order to join his older brother Morgan, Hamilton moved to Texas late in 1846 and opened his own law practice in La Grange, Texas. Three years later he left the city, moving to Austin, Texas, to begin his political career.

In 1849 Hamilton was appointed as the acting state attorney general by Texas Governor Peter H. Bell.
In 1850 he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives representing Travis County as a Democrat. He served one term, leaving office in 1853. During this time he joined the "Opposition Clique", a faction of southern politicians in the Democratic Party who opposed secession and the reopening of the slave trade.

In 1858, Hamilton was elected to the United States House of Representatives as an Independent Democrat representing the western district of Texas. During this time he served on a House committee formed late in 1860 to solve the growing sectional feud between the North and South. He chose not to run for re-election in 1860, but, on his return to Texas in 1861, won a special election to the State Senate. Hamilton was later forced to resign this post after threats to his life for his pro-Union statements. He fled to Mexico in July 1862.

During the Civil War, Hamilton sided with the Union. After fleeing to Mexico, he went on a tour of the Northeast, giving speeches. He spoke out in favor of the Union and criticized the "slave power" of the South. Because of this Hamilton was regarded as a hero by the North, though he was generally viewed as a traitor Texas.

In late 1862 Abraham Lincoln named Hamilton the Military Governor of Texas with the rank of brigadier general of volunteers. He spent the rest of the war holding this empty position in New Orleans, after a Union attempt to capture South Texas failed in 1863.

On June 17, 1865, President Andrew Johnson named Hamilton as the provisional civilian governor of the state. Hamilton held office for 14 months during the early stages of Reconstruction. He was governor when the nation ratified the Thirteenth Amendment and granted economic freedom to the newly freed slaves, although Texas itself declined to ratify the amendment until 1870.

When his plans at the Constitutional Convention of 1866 were not enacted, he rejected Johnson's plan for Reconstruction and aligned himself with the Radical Republicans. He spoke out in favor of black suffrage and in September 1866 organized the Southern Loyalists' Convention in Philadelphia, where he criticized President Johnson. He resigned in 1867 and went to work as a bankruptcy judge in New Orleans. Later that year he accepted a position as a justice of the Texas Supreme Court. Hamilton tried to regain the governorship in the election of 1869, but was defeated.

After leaving office, Hamilton switched to the regular Republican Party. He served on the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1868–69 and on the Republican National Executive Committee. He reversed his views on black suffrage, withdrawing his support for it.
Andrew Jackson Hamilton died in Austin, Texas, on April 11, 1875



HAMLIN, Hannibal, 1809-1891. Vice President of the United States, 1861-1865, under President Abraham Lincoln.  Congressman from Maine, 1843-1847.  U.S. Senator from Maine, 1848-1857, 1857-1861, and 1869-1881.  Governor of Maine, January-February 1857.  In February 1857, he resigned as Governor of Maine to return to the U.S. Senate.  In 1861, he was elected U.S. Vice President.  Was an adamant opponent of the extension of slavery into the new territories.  Supported the Wilmot Proviso and spoke against the compromise laws of 1850.  Strongly opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  Early founding member of the Republican Party.  Supported Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and creation of Black regiments for the Union Army.

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, pp. 196-198; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 65-66;  Harry Draper Hunt (1969). Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, Lincoln's first Vice-President. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-2142-3. Charles Eugene Hamlin (1899). The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin. Syracuse University Press.)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, pp. 196-198:

HAMLIN, HANNIBAL (August 27, 1809-July 4, 1891), vice-president, United States senator, the son of Cyrus and Anna (Livermore) Hamlin, was born at Paris Hill, Maine. He was a descendant in the fifth generation from James Hamlin who settled in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, about 1639. His father, a twin brother of Hannibal Hamlin, the father of Cyrus [q.v.], had studied medicine at Harvard, but after taking up land in Maine, combined farming with the practice of his profession and the holding of sundry local offices. Hannibal grew up in the wholesome environment of a good New England home and attended the village school and Hebron Academy in preparation for college. The latter project had to be abandoned, owing to family misfortunes, and after trying his hand at surveying, printing, and school teaching for a brief period, he decided to study law. He was fortunate in being able to enter the office of Fessenden & Deblois of Portland, the senior partner of which firm, Samuel Fessenden [q.v.], was at once the leading lawyer and the outstanding antislavery advocate of the state. Hamlin was admitted to the bar in 1833 and in the same year settled at Hampden, not far from Bangor. He acquired a considerable practice, but his pronounced talent for party work soon diverted his attention to a political career. As a Jacksonian Democrat, he represented Hampden in the legislature from 1836 to 1841 and again in 1847. He served as speaker for three terms, 1837, 1839- 40. The legislature, during his first five years of service, was an especially valuable training school, containing many members afterwards distinguished in state and national affairs and dealing with such important matters as the financial demoralization of 1837 and succeeding years, the Aroostook boundary embroglio, the abolitionist agitation, and the internal-improvement craze. Hamlin's attitude was usually cautious and conservative.

In 1842 he was elected to Congress and served without special distinction from March 4, 1843, to March 3, 1847. He had decided anti-slavery leanings but, like many of his contemporaries, regarded slavery as an institution beyond the legislative authority of the national government. It is to his credit, however, that he opposed the attempts of its supporters to suppress free discussion. The growing importance of this question eventually produced a serious schism in the Maine Democracy, and in 1848 Hamlin was elected to the United States Senate to serve the balance of the term of John Fairfield, deceased, by the anti-slavery wing of the party. He was reelected in 1851 for a full term. Although a popular campaign orator, he preferred, as he afterwards stated, to be "a working rather than a talking member" of the Senate. As chairman of the committee on commerce he was the author of important legislation dealing with steamboat licensing and inspection and ship-owners' liability. Though a supporter of Pierce in 1852, he became increasingly dissatisfied with the Democratic policy toward slavery, and in 1856 went over to the Republicans. His speech of June 12, 1856, in which he renounced his Democratic allegiance, was widely quoted for campaign purposes and was one of his most effective utterances (Congressional Globe, 34 Congress, 1 Session, pp. 1396-97). In the same year he was elected governor of Maine in an exciting contest which marked the beginning of a long period of Republican predominance. He served only a few weeks as governor, resigning from the Senate January 7, 1857, only to resign the governorship in the following month in order to begin a new term in the Senate. He became increasingly prominent in the anti-slavery contest, and the political needs of 1860 made him a logical running-mate for Lincoln. He again resigned from the Senate on January 17, 1861.

As vice-president during the Civil War, he presided over the Senate with dignity and ability, was on cordial terms with President Lincoln, and performed a great variety of wartime services for his former constituents in Maine. He was a strong advocate of emancipation and became identified with the "Radicals" of Congress . . . his nomination in 1860 had been due largely to party exigencies, his failure to receive a renomination in 1864 may be attributed to the same causes. After retirement from the vice-presidency, he served for about a year as collector of the port of Boston, resigning because of his disapproval of President Johnson's policy. After two years as president of a railroad company constructing a line from Bangor to Dover, he was reelected to the Senate, serving from March 4, 1869, to March 3, 1881. He was associated with the Radical group in reconstruction matters, supported Republican principles in economic issues, and steadily maintained his hold on the party organization of his native state. He was an influential opponent of the third-term movement for Grant in the convention of 1880. After retirement from the Senate he served as minister to Spain for a brief period (1881-82), an appointment of obviously complimentary character, without diplomatic significance. He spent his last years in Bangor, enjoying a wide reputation as a political Nestor and one of the last surviving intimates of President Lincoln.

Hamlin is usually grouped with the members of that remarkable dynasty of Maine statesmen beginning with George Evans and ending with Eugene Hale, all of whom he knew and some of whose fortunes he undoubtedly influenced. As a party manager and leader he did not display the unflinching courage and determination of William Pitt Fessenden or Thomas B. Reed, nor that mastery of a wide field of legislation possessed by George Evans or Nelson Dingley. He had, however, a great fund of shrewd common sense and a gift of stating things in clear and understandable phrase. When as chairman of the committee on foreign relations he urged the acceptance of the Halifax fisheries award in the interest of international arbitration and when, on the floor of the Senate, he opposed the Chinese exclusion law as a violation of treaty obligations (Congressional Record, 45 Congress, 3 Session, pp. 1383-87), he displayed genuine statesmanship. It is also worth mention that if he quarreled with President Hayes over patronage and expressed his contempt for civil-service reform, he at least opposed the infamous "salary grab" and refused to take his share of the loot.

Personally Hamlin had many attractive qualities and retained the loyalty and affection of a host of supporters. Senator Henry L. Dawes, who knew him well, described him as "a born democrat," an interesting conversationalist, and an inveterate smoker and card player. He also mentioned as characteristic of the man that he wore "a black swallow-tailed coat, and ... clung to the old fashioned stock long after it had been discarded by the rest of mankind" (Century Magazine, July 1895). Hamlin had a stocky, powerful frame and great muscular strength. His complexion was so swarthy that in 1860 the story was successfully circulated among credulous Southerners that he had negro blood. He was a skillful fly fisherman and an expert rifle shot. He was twice married: on December 10, 1833, to Sarah Jane Emery, daughter of Judge Stephen A. Emery of Paris Hill, who died April 17, 1855, and on September 25, 1856, to Ellen Vesta Emery, a half-sister of his first wife. Charles Hamlin [q.v.] was his son.

[C. E. Hamlin, The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin (1899), a biography by his grandson, exaggerates Hamlin's importance in national affairs, but is useful in its presentation of Maine party history and occasional documents of personal interest. See also H.F. Andrews, The Hamlin Family (1902), and Howard Carroll, Twelve Americans (1883).

The biographical literature of the period contains many references and the newspapers, probably because of Hamlin's association with Lincoln, published an unusually large amount of obituary material. See especially New York Tribune, July 5, 9, 10, 1891.]

W. A. R.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 65-66:

HAMLIN, Hannibal, statesman, born in Paris, Oxford county, Maine, 27 August, 1809; died in Bangor, Maine, 4 July, 1891. He prepared for college, but was compelled by the death of his father to take charge of the farm until he was of age. He learned printing, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1833, and practised in Hampden, Penobscot county, until 1848. He was a member of the legislature from 1836 till 1840, and again in 1847, and was speaker of the lower branch in 1837-'9 and 1840. In 1840 he received the Democratic nomination for member of congress, and, during the exciting Harrison campaign, held joint discussions with his competitor, being the first to introduce that practice into Maine. In 1842 he was elected as a Democrat to congress, and re-elected in 1844. He was chosen to the U. S. senate for four years in 1848, to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of John Fairfield, and was re-elected in 1851, but resigned in 1857 to be inaugurated governor, having been elected to that office as a Republican. Less than a month afterward, on 20 February, he resigned the governorship, as he had again been chosen U. S. senator for the full term of six years. He served until January, 1861, when he resigned, having been elected vice-president on the ticket with Abraham Lincoln. He presided over the senate from 4 March, 1861, till 3 March, 1865. In the latter year he was appointed collector of the port of Boston, but resigned in 1866. From 1861 till 1865 he had also acted as regent of the Smithsonian institution, and was reappointed in 1870, continuing to act for the following twelve years, during which time he became dean of the board. He was again elected and re-elected to the U. S. senate, serving from 4 March, 1869, till 3 March, 1881. In June of that year he was named minister to Spain, but gave up the office the year following and returned to this country. He received the degree of LL. D. from Colby university, then Waterville college, of which institution he was trustee for over twenty years. Senator Hamlin, although a Democrat, was an original anti-slavery man, and so strong were his convictions that they finally led to his separation from that party. Among the significant incidents of his long career of nearly fifty years may be mentioned the fact that, in the temporary and involuntary absence of David Wilmot from the house of representatives, during the session of the 29th congress, at the critical moment when the measure, since known as “the Wilmot proviso,” had to be presented or the opportunity irrevocably lost, Mr. Hamlin, while his anti-slavery friends were in the greatest confusion and perplexity, seeing that only a second's delay would be fatal, offered the bill and secured its passage by a vote of 115 to 106. In common, however, with Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Hamlin strove simply to prevent the extension of slavery into new territory, and did not seek to secure its abolition. In a speech in the U. S. senate, 12 June, 1856, in which he gave his reasons for changing his party allegiance, he thus referred to the Democratic convention then recently held at Cincinnati: “The convention has actually incorporated into the platform of the Democratic party that doctrine which, only a few years ago, met with nothing but ridicule and contempt here and elsewhere, namely, that the flag of the Federal Union, under the constitution of the United States, carries slavery wherever it floats. If this baleful principle be true, then that national ode, which inspires us always as on a battle-field, should be re-written by Drake, and should read: 

‘Forever float that standard sheet!  
    Where breathes the foe but falls before us, 
With slavery's soil beneath our feet,   
    And slavery's banner streaming o'er us.’” 

When he had been elected vice-president on the ticket with Mr. Lincoln, he accepted an invitation to meet the latter at Chicago, and, calling on the president-elect, found him in a room alone. Mr. Lincoln arose, and, coming toward his guest, said abruptly: “Have we ever been introduced to each other, Mr. Hamlin?” “No, sir, I think not,” was the reply. “That also is my impression,” continued Mr. Lincoln; "but I remember distinctly while I was in congress to have heard you make a speech in the senate. I was very much struck with that speech, senator— particularly struck with it—and for the reason that it was filled, chock up, with the very best kind of anti-slavery doctrine.” “Well, now,” replied Hamlin, laughing, “that is very singular, for my one and first recollection of yourself is of having heard you make a speech in the house—a speech that was so full of good humor and sharp points that I, together with others of your auditors, was convulsed with laughter.” The acquaintance, thus cordially begun, ripened into a close friendship, and it is affirmed that during all the years of trial, war, and bloodshed that followed, Abraham Lincoln continued to repose the utmost confidence in his friend and official associate. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III.



HAVEN, Gilbert, 1821-1880, clergyman, African American civil rights advocate, abolitionist, bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church.  At Wesleyan University (B.A. 1846), he was noted for his scholarship, his genial personality, his anti-slavery opinions, and his gift for leadership.

(Dictionary of American Biography, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, pp. 407-408; Erastus Wentworth. Gilbert Haven: A Monograph (1880); George Prentice, The Life of Gilbert Haven (1883); Memorials of Gilbert Haven (1880), ed. by Wm. H. Daniels; T. L. Flood, "Gilbert Haven," in Lives of Methodist Bishops (1882), by T. L. Flood and J. W. Hamilton)

Dictionary of American Biography, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, pp. 407-408:

HAVEN, GILBERT (September 19, 1821-January 3, 1880), abolitionist, bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was born in Malden, Massachusetts, being the fifth of the ten children of Gilbert and Hannah (Burrill) Haven, of old New England stock. He was a cousin of Erastus Otis Haven [q.v.]. He attended Wesleyan Academy, Wilbraham, Massachusetts, where he experienced a Methodist conversion; and Wesleyan University (B.A. 1846), where he was noted for his scholarship, his genial personality, his anti-slavery opinions, and his gift for leadership. After five years in Amenia (New York) Seminary, where he taught Greek and German and was for three years principal, he entered the Methodist Episcopal ministry in the New England Conference in 1851. During his early pastorate in Massachusetts he distinguished himself by his interest in public affairs, especially the moral questions that were involved in the political issues of the time. His sermons, and notably his articles in the religious and secular press, were vigorous expressions of fiery convictions on slavery, temperance, et cetera. At Lincoln's first call for troops he volunteered and was commissioned chaplain of the 8th Massachusetts on April 30, 1861.

After a year in Europe (1862) he returned to the ministry in Boston. He was now bent on securing for the freedmen the full fruits of emancipation. He advocated civil rights and absolute social equality, even to racial amalgamation. He resisted the wish of the bishops to send him South as a missionary because they limited his field to the blacks. From 1867 to 1872 as editor of Zion's Herald, the Boston Methodist weekly, he was a powerful ally of Charles Sumner and the radical Republicans, as well as a strong advocate of prohibition, woman's suffrage, and lay representation. He compelled the nation to take notice of him, while his own church echoed with his sayings-" Havenisms." In 1868 he was a member of the General Conference and mentioned for the episcopacy. In 1872 he was elected, to the dismay of conservatives and the rapturous delight of the negroes and radicals. His residence was fixed in Atlanta, Georgia. Socially ostracized and threatened with violence because he practised the racial equality which he preached, he energetically pressed the freedmen's claims, gave his own money and solicited gifts to found schools and colleges for them, and enlisted Northern college graduates to come South and teach the former slaves and their children. By his articles, sermons, and lectures he kept the North informed with regard to the Southern policy of repression, and fearlessly denounced the secret organizations which "murdered people for their opinions." He visited Mexico in 1873 with the Reverend William Butler, and cooperated with him in planting Methodism in the capital. In 1876 he "visited the Methodist missions in Liberia, where he contracted the African malaria which tormented him ever after. He finally succumbed on January 3, 1880, in Malden, Massachusetts, leaving a son and a daughter, both of whom became noted in religious work. His wife, Mary Ingraham, whom he married at Amenia, New York, in 1851, died in 1860. Bishop Haven was of medium height, compactly built, with ruddy face and red hair. His voice was unattractive and his delivery forced, but he carried his hearers and his readers with him by the strength and warmth of his own convictions. As a writer he was journalistic rather than literary. His publications were: The Pilgrim's Wallet (1866); National Sermons (1869);
Father Taylor, the Sailor Preacher (1872), with Thomas Russell; Our Next Door Neighbor: A Winter in Mexico (1875); Christus Consolator (1893), with a preface and notes by his son; and pamphlets including: Parkerism (1860), Lay Representation in the Methodist Episcopal Church (1864), Te Deum Laudamus: the Cause and the Consequence of the Election of Abraham Lincoln (1860), The Uniter and Liberator of America (1865)-a memorial discourse on Lincoln, An Appeal to Our People for Our People (1875). Some years after his death there was published Heavenly Messenger (1890), which, it was alleged, was a communication from Haven through a spiritualist medium.

[Erastus Wentworth. Gilbert Haven: A Monograph (1880); George Prentice, The Life of Gilbert Haven (1883); Memorials of Gilbert Haven (1880), ed. by Wm. H. Daniels; T. L. Flood, "Gilbert Haven," in Lives of Methodist Bishops (1882), by T. L. Flood and J. W. Hamilton; Josiah Adams, The Genealogy of the Descendants of Richard Haven of Lynn, Massachusetts (1843) and Continuation of the Genealogy (1849); the Christian Advocate (New York), January 8, 1880.]

J. R. J.    



HECKER, Friedrich Karl Franz (September 28, 1811-March 24, 1881), German revolutionist, Union soldier, farmer. Though never accepting political office, he was one of the early Republicans, was on the Fremont electoral ticket, stumped the East and West against slavery, especially where Germans had settled, and was an ardent supporter of Lincoln.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2 pp. 493-495:

HECKER, FRIEDRICH KARL FRANZ (September 28, 1811-March 24, 1881), German revolutionist, Union soldier, farmer, was born in Eichtersheim, Baden. His father was well-to-do, a court counsellor under Furst-Primas von Dalberg; his mother, nee Von Lueders, was of noble family. After an early training in the Lyceum at Mannheim, he studied law and history at the universities of Heidelberg and Munich, receiving at the latter his doctor's degree in law. After a visit to Paris in 1835, he settled down in Mannheim and rapidly gained distinction as an advocate. Drawn into politics by his election in 1842 to the Second Chamber of Baden, he led, with Itzstein and Sander, the liberal movement for parliamentary government. His speech in the Chamber of Baden opposing the incorporation of Schleswig-Holstein with Denmark won him fame throughout Germany, and his popularity increased when on a visit to Berlin in 1845 he was expelled from Prussia. Not willing to compromise on, halfway measures, as were his colleagues Bassermann and Welker, he resigned in 1847 and made a trip to Southern France and Algiers, but he was soon recalled by his constituents. Regarded as the champion of popular rights, he drew up, with Gustav Struve, the program of the Claims of the People of Baden at the Offenburg popular convention, September 12, 1847. Idealist that he was, he thought the German people were ready to throw over their monarchistic and particularistic traditions at once and declare themselves for a united republic. Such a resolution he brought forward in the Preliminary Parliament (Vorparlament) at Frankfurt, March 31, 1848. The moderates won, however, and when the government of Baden resorted to energetic measures, Hecker proclaimed the German Republic from Constance, and summoned the people of the Lake District (Seekreis) and the peasants of the Black Forest to armed resistance. He hoped for a spontaneous uprising in vast numbers of such as had been carried away by his fiery eloquence and magnetic personality, but the poorly armed force of a few thousand that gathered about him was no match for the combined troops of Baden and Hessen under General von Gagern. In the engagement near Kandern, April 20, 1848, Hecker's little army was badly routed and the leader fled across the Swiss border. Hecker was honored with reelection to the Chamber, but the Baden government would not respect his immunity, and the new Frankfurt Parliament refused to admit him to a seat as a member. He decided to emigrate, with the hope of collecting funds for the support of the revolution. The defeated Hecker was received like a conquering hero in New York City, and the ovations were repeated in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. With the aid of friends he selected a farm near Belleville, Illinois., and planned to join the colony of "Latin farmers," but when in May 1849 the Baden government was overthrown, the revolutionary Provisional Government called him home. He got as far as Strasbourg, where he learned that the Prussian armies had already vanquished the revolutionary forces in the Palatinate and Baden, and that the cause upon which he had staked all was lost. Emigration was now compulsory. With his wife (nee Josephine Eisenhardt of Mannheim) and two children he set sail from France and returned to his Belleville farm, situated near what later became the village of Summerfield, St. Clair County, Illinois.

Hecker became a successful farmer, cattle raiser, and viticulturist. A born leader, he could not keep out of politics when great questions agitated his adopted country. Though never accepting political office, he was one of the early Republicans, was on the Fremont electoral ticket, stumped the East and West against slavery, especially where Germans had settled, and was a n ardent supporter of Lincoln. At the age of fifty when the Civil War began he served as a private soldier under General Sigel, until he was made colonel of the 24th Illinois. Difficulties with superior officers caused him to resign hot-headedly, but soon another regiment was recruited for him in Chicago, the 82nd Illinoi s, which he led for the greater part of the war. He was wounded severely at Chancellorsville, but recovered quickly and did his part in the battles of Chattanooga, Missionary Ridge, and elsewhere. He returned to his farm after the war, but remained a chosen leader of the German element on public occasions and in public affairs. His speech at St. Louis in 1871 (Festrede zur St. Louiser Friedensfeier) was noteworthy, showing his adherence to republican principles. Another address, delivered July 4 of the same year a t Trenton, Illinois, is included in D. J. Brewer's World's Best Orations (1899, Volume VII). He was active in the Liberal Republican movement of 1872 and, although he opposed Greeley's nomination and spoke against him in the campaign, gave hearty support to the state Liberal Republican ticket. In 1873 he visited Germany. He died of pneumonia at his Summerfield farm on March 24, 1881, after a very brief illness. His wife and five children survived him. Reeker's winning personality and inspiring oratory, his integrity, wholeheartedness, and readiness to sacrifice all for the cause in which he believed, made him almost a legendary hero, in spite of his impetuosity, tactlessness, and vanity.

[Allegemeine Deutsche Biographie, Bd. 50 (1905); F. K. F. H ecker, Die Erhebung des Volkes in Baden fur die Deutsche Republik im Friihjahr 1848 (1848); Friedrich von Weech, Badische Biographiee11, Bd. 4 (1891); Karl Mathy, Aus dem Nachlass: Briefe al1s den lahren 1846- 1848 (1898), ed. by Ludwig Mathy; Friedrich Hecker und sein Anteil an der Geschiclzte Deutsch/ands 1md Amerikas (1881); Erinner1111 g an Friedrich Hecker (1882); Redenmd Vorlesungen von Friedrich Hecker (1872); Memoirs of Gustave Koerner 1809- 1896 (1909), ed. by T. J. McCormack; Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (1907); 1848:  Der Vorkan,pf deutscher Einhet und Freiheit (1914); F. I. Herriott, "The Conference in the Deutsches Haus, Chicago, May 14-15, 1860," Trans. Illinois State Historical Society ... 1928 (1928); St. Louis Globe-Democrat, March 25, 1881.]

A.B.F.



HINDS, James M., radical republican U.S. Congressman from Arkansas, murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1868 for advocating civil rights for former slaves.

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress:

HINDS, JAMES, a Representative from Arkansas; born in the town of Hebron, near Salem, New York, December 5, 1833; attended the common schools and the State normal school at Albany, New York; attended law school at St. Louis, Missouri, and was graduated from the Cincinnati Law College in 1856; was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in St. Peter, Minnesota; district attorney for three years and served for some time as United States district attorney for the State of Minnesota; joined an expedition under Governor Sibley against the Indians on the western frontier in 1862; although a member of the Democratic Party, was a supporter of President Lincoln; moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1865 and continued the practice of law; delegate from Pulaski County to the State constitutional convention in 1867; served as a commissioner to codify the State laws; upon the readmission of Arkansas to representation was elected as a Republican to the Fortieth Congress and served from June 22, 1868, until assassinated near Indian Bay, Arkansas, October 22, 1868; interment in East Norwich, N.Y.

“Upon reaching Arkansas, one of the eleven states of the former Confederacy, Hinds found a state heavily degraded by the Civil War.

As with many Northerners, Hinds did not understand the white supremacy, and resentment toward freedmen and Northerners, in the South at the time. He believed that in because of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War, freedmen in the South should enjoy the same liberties as in the North, and underestimated continuing fierce resistance from Democrat whites. Measures were enacted to block freedmen from voting and racial violence was prevalent. Hinds was called a carpetbagger, a pejorative term used by conservative Southerners to disparage Northerners who moved south during Reconstruction.

In mid-1865 in Little Rock, Hinds formed a law practice with Elisha Baxter, one of the state's leading Unionists. Baxter, who fought with the Union Army  in the war, would be selected to serve on to the Arkansas Supreme Court by the newly established government and was later governor of Arkansas.

In October 1867, Hinds was elected to be a delegate at Arkansas's 1868 Constitution Convention. At that Convention he was made chairman of the Committee on the Elective Franchise. The new constitution that emerged that February, ratified in March, provided voting rights for black males over the age of twenty-one and for the creation of public schools for both black and white children. Elected to Congress early that year, Hinds went to Washington D.C. in April, 1868, where he arranged for Arkansas to be the first state to rejoin the union under the 1867 Reconstruction Acts. In May 1868, Hinds was a delegate at the 1868 Republican National Convention held in Chicago. Returning to Arkansas in August, he campaigned vigorously for Republican presidential candidate Grant, and for civil rights for former slaves.

Hinds was the first U.S. Congressman assassinated in office. He was murdered on the eve of the 1868 presidential election, which was a contest over civil rights and suffrage for freedmen. Republicans, led by former Union Army General Ulysses S. Grant, favored those measures, while the Democratic Party opposed them. On October 22, 1868, en route to a campaign event for Grant near the village of Indian Bay in Monroe County, Hinds and fellow Republican politician Joseph Brooks were shot. Brooks managed to stay on his horse and ride to the event to bring back assistance. Hinds was knocked off his horse by the shotgun blast to his back, and lay on the road until help arrived. Before he died, Hinds sent a message to his wife and identified his killer. He died about two hours after the attack. A Coroner's Inquest identified the shooter as George Clark, secretary of the Monroe County Democratic Party and a local Klansman. Clark was never arrested or prosecuted.

A week after the attack, The Morning Republican newspaper published the story, recounting that "Men passing and returning soon found Mr. Hinds lying in the road still alive and rational, but conscious of the fact that his wound was of such serious nature that but a few moments more remained of his earthly career."

Governor Powell Clayton feared that the murder of Hinds, coming amid rising violence against Republicans and freed people, was a precursor to a general attack on state officers to seize control of the government and the polls prior to the election, but the insurrection did not take place.”



HOLDEN, WILLIAM WOODS (November 24, 1818-March 1, 1892), political journalist, governor of North Carolina, 1868-1871, radical republican.  Favored the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.  Advocated for unrestricted negro suffrage in 1867.  The state legislature of 1870, at his urgent insistence, passed a number of acts directed against the Ku Klux Kan.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 1, pp. 139-140:

HOLDEN, WILLIAM WOODS (November 24, 1818-March 1, 1892), political journalist, governor of North Carolina, was born in Orange County, N. C. Ambitious from childhood, he made good use of his limited educational opportunities, and when he was ten became printer's devil to Dennis Heartt, editor of the Hillsboro Recorder, with whom he stayed for six years. After a year of newspaper work in Milton, N. C., and Danville, Virginia, he returned to Hillsboro as a clerk. In 1837 he went to Raleigh where he worked on the Star, the leading Whig paper, studying law during his scanty. leisure. His political writing attracted attention, and in 1843 he was offered the North Carolina Standard, the leading Democratic paper, on condition that he become a Democrat. He accepted and began enthusiastically the work of inspiring a minority party. The Whigs reviled him as a turncoat and traitor, but the Democrats soon regarded him as a gift from heaven. A fighter and an intuitive and,. masterly politician, he led them to victory and made the Standard more powerful than any other newspaper has ever been in North Carolina. During th ese years he preached editorially the most advanced secession doctrine. In 1858 he was a candidate for the gubernatorial nomination, but was defeated by John Willis Ellis [q.v. ], chiefly through the efforts of former Whigs. Embittered by this disappointment and by his defeat for the Senate in the following legislature, he drifted away from his old party associates until in 1860 he was out of accord with them on state issues and wavering with respect to state rights between advanced secessionist and pure nationalistic doctrine.

He was a delegate to the Charleston and Baltimore conventions and refused to withdraw from the latter. In the campaign he supported Breckinridge, though his heart was probably with Douglas, and after Lincoln's election, favoring a "watch and wait" policy, he was elected a Union delegate to the convention which the people rejected. He was also elected to the secession convention, where he voted for secession and pledged "the last man and the last dollar" to the Southern cause. Rapidly cooling towards the war, he aided in the establishment of a conservative party. He supported Z. B. Vance [q.v.] for governor in 1862, believing undoubtedly that he would himself control the administration and bring about a breach with the Confederate government. When he discovered his mistake, he broke with Vance, and in the summer of 1863 was the leading figure in the peace movement. As a result, a Georgia regiment destroyed his press and his friends retaliated by similar injury to the administration organ. In February 1864, immediately after the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, he suspended the Standard for several months. In May he announced his candidacy for governor with no platform but a general understanding that his election would re0 suit either in a convention to secede from the Confederacy, or in direct negotiation with the Federal government. He was defeated and remained quiet until May 1865, when President Johnson made him provisional governor. Since Holden had played fast and loose with parties, men, and principles, few had any confidence in him. He used his official power. for personal ends, to punish old enemies, reward new friends, or stifle opposition, and in consequence he was defeated at the November election. Once more he shifted position, and, cooling from his fervid support of the President, favored the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the spring of 1866 the President appointed him minister to San Salvador, but the Senate refused confirmation. Increasingly bitter, he now advocated rigorous punishment of the "rebels," and urged that Congress control reconstruction. The Fourteenth Amendment soon seemed too lenient, and in the winter of 1866-67 he spent much time in Washington advising radical leaders and working for the overthrow of the state government. In 1865 he had opposed the liberal policy adopted by the legislature towards the freedmen, but on January I, 1867, addressing the negroes in Raleigh, he advocated unrestricted negro suffrage. He early won the favor of the Carpet-bagger element which flattered and entirely controlled him. Elected governor in 1868, he began a highly partisan administration which was characterized by the most brazen corruption, extravagance, and incompetency. No one charged him with personal financial profit, but he screened and protected the guilty. The cause which he upheld was soon doomed. The legislature of 1870, at his urgent insistence, passed a number of acts directed against the Ku Klux, one of which authorized him to proclaim any county in a state of insurrection and to use the militia to suppress the uprising. In March he declared Alamance in insurrection; in June, with an election approaching and every indication pointing to a Democratic victory, following the advice of Senator John Pool and assured of aid from President Grant, he planned to raise two regiments of state troops with which to suppress the opposition and carry the election. In July he proclaimed Caswell County in insurrection. George W. Kirk, a noted Tennessee bushwhacker in command of one illegally recruited regiment, occupied both Caswell and Alamance, arresting a number of peaceful citizens and treating them with great brutality. By Holden's personal order Josiah Turner, editor of the Sentinel, the leading Democratic paper, was arrested outside the insurrectionary area. When Kirk, under Holden's order, refused to obey the writ of habeas corpus, Chief Justice Pearson declared the power of the judiciary exhausted. Civil war was impending when Judge George W. Brooks of the federal district court issued the writ and discharged the prisoners, the President declining to interfere. Meantime the Democrats had swept the state in the election. The state troops dispersed and the House of Representatives impeached Holden, presenting eight articles against him, on six of which he was convicted. He was removed and fore ver disqualified from holding office.

Going to Washington, where he failed to secure federal aid, he became one of the editors of the Daily Morning Chronicle (Republican). In 1872 Grant appointed him minister to Peru, but he declined, and becoming postmaster of Raleigh in 1873, held the place until 1881. Holden was twice married: first, in 1841, to Ann Augusta Young, and second, to Louisa Virginia Harrison, both of Raleigh. In personal intercourse he was kindly, generous, and charitable.

[Memoirs of W. W. Holden (1911), ed. by W. K. Boyd; "William W. Holden" in Trinity Coll. History Soc. Ann. Pub. of History Papers, volume III (1899); S. A. Ashe, Biog. History of N. C., volume III (1905); The Correspondence of Jonathan Worth (2 volumes, 1909) and The Papers of Thos. Ruffin (2 volumes, 1918), both ed. by J. G. de R. Hamilton; Hamilton, "Reconstruction in North Carolina," in Columbia Univ. Studies in History, Econ., and Pub. Law, volume LVIII (1914); Journal of the Convention of the People of N. C. ... 1861 (1862); Trial of Win. W. Holden, Go v. o f N. C. (3 volumes, 1871); files of the N. C. Standard; News and Observer (Raleigh), March 2, 1892.]

J. G. de R. H.



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.]

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. Vol. 2., By William H. Barnes, 1869, p. 103:

JACOB M. HOWARD.

JACOB M. HOWARD was born in Shaftsbury, Vermont, July 10th, 1805. His father was a substantial farmer of Bennington County, and the sixth in descent from William Howard, who settled in Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1635, five years after the town was established.

The subject of this sketch, although frequently in requisition to assist in farm labors, early evinced a taste for study, which he was permitted at intervals to gratify by attendance at the district school. Subsequently pursuing preparatory studies in the academies of Bennington and Brattleboro, he entered Williams College in 1826. His studies were much interrupted, in consequence of his want of means and the necessity of teaching to pay expenses, yet, with characteristic perseverance, he made his way through college, and graduated in 1830. He immediately commenced the study of law in Ware, Massachusetts, and in July, 1832, he removed to Detroit, then the capital of Michigan Territory, where he was admitted to the bar in the following year. In 1835 he was married to Catharine A. Shaw, a young lady whose acquaintance he had formed at Ware.

In his professional career, Mr. Howard was ever faithful to the interests of his clients, bringing to their service great industry, a mind well stored with legal learning, much native sagacity and force of logic.
In 1835 he was a Whig candidate for a seat in the Convention to form a State Constitution, but was not elected.

In the controversy of 1834 and 1835 between the Territory and Ohio, respecting a tier of townships which had ever belonged to Michigan, on her southern border, embracing the present city of Toledo, Mr. Howard took strong ground against the claim of Ohio; and, having employed his pen in repelling it, finally, when Mr. Mason, the territorial governor, thought it necessary to employ military force against a similar force from Ohio, Mr. Howard volunteered, and proceeded with arms to make good the arguments he had advanced. The expedition was, however, productive only of wasteful expenditure to the Territory, and a large slaughter of pigs and poultry.

In 1838, Mr. Howard was a member .of the State Legislature, and took an active part in the enactment of the code known as the Revised Laws of that year; in the railroad legislation of the State; and in examining into the condition of the brood of " free banks," known as "wildcat banks," that had come into pernicious existence under the free-banking system enacted the year before. This examination developed such a scene of fraud and corruption in the local currency of the State, that the paper of those banks soon lost all credit; and the State Supreme Court, as soon as the question was fairly brought before it, adjudged them to be all unconstitutional and void; a decision in which the community most heartily acquiesced.

In the presidential canvass of 1840, which resulted in the election of General Harrison, Mr. Howard was a candidate for Congress, and was elected by 1,500 majority. During the three sessions of the Twenty-seventh Congress he engaged but seldom in debate, but was an attentive observer of the scenes which passed before him. His feeling3 and opinions had ever been against slavery, its influences, its crimes, its power. John Quincy Adams and Joshua E. Giddings, both members of the House, championed the anti-slavery cause. Henry A. Wise, Mr. Gilmer, and Mr. Mallory, of Virginia, and Thomas F. Marshall, of Kentucky, were the leading combatants on the other side. The conflict, which occupied a large portion of that Congress, was fierce and fiery.

With what interest did Mr. Howard, then a new member and a young man, drink in the words of the "old man eloquent," as he unfolded his mighty argument against the "sum of all villainies," and the dangers it menaced to the liberties of our country!

He left that Congress with the full conviction that the final solution of the great question would be in a civil war, though hoping that some measure might be devised less radical and terrible, that should calm the deeply-stirred passions of the people. He remained steadfastly attached to the Whig party, and in the presidential canvasses of 1814, 1848, and 1852, exerted himself to promote the election of Mr. Clay, General Taylor, and General Scott.

In the trial of a slave case, under the fugitive slave act of 1850, in the United States Circuit Court, before Judge McLean, he denounced that act as a defiance, a challenge to the conflict of arms, by the South to the North, and predicted that sooner or later it would be accepted; and characterized its author (Mr. Mason, of Virginia,) as an enemy of his country and a traitor to the Union.

On the defeat of General Scott he resolved to withdraw entirely from politics; but on the passage of the act of 1854, repealing the Missouri compromise, he again entered the political arena in resistance to that flagrant encroachment of the slave power. He was among those who took the earliest steps to effect an organization for the overthrow of the Democratic party of the North, which had become the willing ally of the pro-slavery or secession party of the South. He saw that such a party must embrace all the elements of popular opposition to the principles and aims of the slaveholders. The old Whig party, never as a party having made its influence felt in opposition to those principles and aims, had become powerless as an agency whereby to combat them—or even to move the hearts of the people. Yet by far the greater portion of its members in the free states were in sentiment opposed to the schemes of the slave power, now too manifest to be misapprehended or viewed with indifference. To count upon this portion of the Whig party was obvious. The great end to be obtained was a firm and cordial union of this with two other elements, the old Abolition party proper, and the "Free Soil Democracy." In Michigan, these last two had already coalesced and had put in nomination a State ticket, at the head of which was the name of Hon. Kinsley S. Bingham as their candidate for Governor. A call, numerously signed, was issued, inviting all freemen of the State, opposed to the recent measures of Congress on the subject of slavery, to assemble at Jackson on the 6th of July. The assemblage was numerous, and the utmost harmony and good feeling prevailed. "Whigs," "Abolitionists," "Free Soilers," and " Liberty Men," met and shook hands like a band of brothers. A deep seriousness pervaded the whole, and a prescience of the events soon to develop themselves, seemed to teach them that this was the "beginning of the end" of slavery. Mr. Howard was the sole author of the series of resolutions that were adopted. They strongly denounced slavery as a moral, social, and political evil, as a source of national weakness and endless internal strife; they condemned the repeal of the Missouri compromise and the consequent opening of all the new territories to slavery; they encouraged in no equivocal terms the free settlers of Kansas to resist the tyranny and outrages with which the slave power was seeking to crush them. They went further—they demanded, not the restoration of that compromise, but, as an indemnity for the future, as just and necessary safeguards against the grasping ambition of slaveholders, the banishment of slavery, by law, from all the territories of the United States, from the District of Columbia, and all other places owned by the Government. They invoked the cordial co-operation of all persons and parties for the attainment of these great ends; and gave to the new party there consolidated the name of "REPILICANS," * by which it has since been known.

Mr. Bingham was here again nominated for Governor, and Mr. Howard, against his own earnest remonstrances, put in nomination for Attorney-General of the State. At the ensuing November election, the whole ticket was elected by a large majority, notwithstanding the earnest appeals of General Cass and other speakers from the stump, struggling against the popular current.

Mr. Howard was a member of the committee on the address at the first national Republican convention held at Pittsburgh, February 22d, 1856. He held the office of Attorney-General of Michigan for ix years, and left it January 1st, 1861. While holding that important
____________________________________________
Mr. Greeley suggested the name of "Democratic Republican party," but as the Democratic party had been the authors and abettors of the measures complained of, the new party rejected even any nominal connection with them. ______________________________________________
office, his incessant labors attested his fidelity to his trust; and the published reports of the Supreme Court evince his thoroughness and talents as a lawyer. To him the State is indebted for its excellent law, known as the registration act, by which all voters are required to enter their names on the proper books of townships and wards.

Mr. Bingham was elected to the United States Senate in January, 1859, and died in October, 1861. On the assembling of the Legislature in January following, Mr. Howard was chosen to fill the vacancy. He was an active member of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and that on Military Affairs. He gave an earnest support to all the measures for the prosecution of the war to subdue the rebellion, and was among the first to recommend the passage of the Conscription Act of 1863, being convinced that the volunteer system could not safely be relied upon as a means of recruiting and increasing the army. Every measure for supplying men and means found in him a warm supporter. He favored the principle of confiscation of the property of the rebels, and one of his most elaborate and eloquent speeches was made on that subject in April, 1862. A careful observer of the movements of parties, he early came to the conclusion that General McClellan was acting in the interest of the anti-war portion of the Democratic party, and consequently lost all confidence in his efficiency as a commander. Influenced by this feeling, he called on President Lincoln, in company with Senator Lane of Indiana, in March, 1862, and earnestly urged the dismissal of that General from the command of the Army of the Potomac. But Mr. Lincoln thought it best, as he said, " to try Mac a little longer." He added: "Mac is slow, but I still have confidence in him." And thus McClellan was retained in command.

Mr. Howard was among the first to favor an amendment of the Constitution, abolishing slavery throughout the United States, in the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, who reported the amendment as it was finally passed by both houses and ratified by the State Legislatures. He drafted the first and principal clause in the exact words in which it now appears. Some members of the Committee remarked despairingly: "it is undertaking too much; we cannot get it through the Legislatures, or even the houses of Congress." Mr. Howard replied with animation: "We can! Now is the time. None can be more propitious. The people are with us, and if we give them a chance they will demolish slavery at a blow. Let us try!" In January, 1865, Mr. Howard was re-elected to the Senate for the full term commencing on the 4th of March of that year. The successes of our arms in the southwest, and the hope of converting rebels into union men there, had induced President Lincoln to send General Banks with a large force to New Orleans, and by formal instructions to invest him with authority to hold, under his own military orders, elections of members of new State conventions, to result finally in the reconstruction of the State governments. This strange plan of reconstruction required the assent of only one-tenth part of the white voters. The crudest and most unsatisfactory of all plans of reconstruction, it went into operation in Louisiana, and was in truth the suggestion of that stupendous plan of usurpation of the powers of Congress under the pretense of reconstructing the rebel States afterwards, in the summer of 1865, attempted to be carried out b} Andrew Johnson, when he became President by the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. A joint resolution for the recognition of Louisiana, organized under the military orders of General Banks, came before the Senate from the Judiciary Committee, and was the subject of animated and elaborate discussion. Mr. Howard opposed it, and on the 25th of February, 1865, delivered a speech in which he fully and clearly demonstrated, that in the reconstruction of the seceded States the authority of Congress was supreme and exclusive, and that the executive as such was invested with no authority whatever. He insisted that by seceding from the Union, and in making war upon the Government, the rebel States became enemies in the sense of the laws of nations, and thus forfeited their rights and privileges as States; that consequently, when subdued by the arms of the Government, they were " conquered" and lay at the mercy of their conquerors, for exactly the same reason as prevails in cases of international wars; that it pertained to the law-making power of the United States, not to the President, to deal with the subjugated communities, and that Congress in its own discretion was to judge of the time and mode of re-admitting them as States of the Union. And this is the doctrine that has practically and finally prevailed, after a most gigantic struggle between the two branches of the Government.

In the reconstruction legislation of 1867 and 1868, the principles of constitutional law, thus affirmed by Mr. Howard, were fully recognized and put into practice ; for that legislation rests exclusively upon the ground that Congress, and not the President, is vested with the power of reorganizing the rebel States.

During the session of 1865-6, he served on the joint committee on Reconstruction, one of whose duties was to inquire and report upon the condition of the rebel States. For convenience the committee divided them into several districts, and to Mr. Howard was assigned Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. The voluminous report of this committee, containing the testimony of the numerous witnesses examined, shows the extent of their labors and the perplexing nature of the subjects committed to them. As the principal result of their labors, they submitted to Congress a proposition to amend the Constitution, now known as the Fourteenth Article: a most important, amendment, which, after thorough discussion, in which Mr. Howard took a leading part, passed both houses of Congress and was submitted to the State legislatures for ratification. Had it been ratified by the State governments of the rebel States, inaugurated by the executive proclamations of Mr. Johnson, all the troubles that followed would have been avoided. But that singular man and a majority of his cabinet strenuously opposed and defeated it in tho3e bodies. The result is known. Forced to vindicate their own authority, and to prevent anarchy in those States, Congress, in March, 1867, enacted the first of that series of statutes known as the reconstruction acts, by which they declared those States without legal governments, and subjected them to a quasi military rule until proper State constitutions could be formed on the principle of impartial suffrage of whites and blacks, and until Congress should formally re-admit them. In the earnest struggle to uphold this legislation, Mr. Howard was ever at his post of duty. He drew the report of the Committee on Military Affairs, on the removal of Hon. E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War, by President Johnson, strongly condemning that act, and exposing Mr. Johnson's complicity in the “ New Orleans Riots.". When the contest between the two branches of the government resulted in the impeachment of Mr. Johnson by the House of Representatives, Mr. Howard voted the accused guilty of the high crimes and misdemeanors charged in the articles of impeachment. He is a man of medium stature, compact frame, and much power of endurance. He is an eloquent speaker and a formidable antagonist in debate. He is as exemplary in his private life as honorable in his public career.



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.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. Vol. 2., By William H. Barnes, 1869, p. 147:

TIMOTHY O. HOWE.

TIMOTHY O. HOWE is a native of Livermore, Maine, and was born on the 24th of February, 1816. Many generations since, his ancestors settled in Massachusetts. His father was a physician, living in a strictly rural district, having a wide practice among the farming community of fifty years ago.

After receiving a good common school education, Mr. Howe studied law, first with Hon. Samuel P. Benson, of Winthrop, and subsequently with Judge Robinson, of Ellsworth. In 1839 he was admitted to the bar, and immediately commenced the practice of his profession, at Readfield. In 1841 he married Miss L. A. Haynes.

In politics, he was an ardent Whig, and a devoted admirer of Henry Clay. Taking a warm interest in political questions, he was elected by the Whigs of his district as a member of the popular branch of the Maine Legislature of 1845. The Hon. William Pitt Fessenden was a member of the same body. In the Legislature he took an active part in discussions, and was recognized as a young man of unusual promise.

In the latter part of that year he removed from Maine to the Territory of Wisconsin, and opened a law office at Green Bay, which, at that time, was a small village, separated from the more thickly settled parts of the Territory by a wide belt of forest, extending for forty or fifty miles to the southward. He soon became known, however, to the people of the Territory, and upon its admission into the Union, in 1848, was nominated by the Whigs for Congress. The district being largely Democratic, he was defeated. In 1850 he was elected Judge of the Circuit Court. At that time the Circuit Judges of the State were also Judges of the Supreme Court, and Judge Howe was, during a part of his term, Chief Justice of the State. In 1854, immediately after the passage of the Nebraska bill, the Whigs, Free Soilers, and Anti-Nebraska Democrats, of Wisconsin, met in mass convention at Madison, the capital, and organized the Republican party in that State. This occurred two years before the national organization of the party. Judge Howe was then on the bench, and took no active part in politics, but published a letter expressing his hearty approbation of the movement. The following year he resigned his office as Judge and resumed the practice of the law. He bore a leading part in the State canvass of that and the following year, as a speaker, in the advocacy of Republican principles and the election of the nominees of the Republican party.

The year 1856 was signalized by one of the most remarkable judicial trials in the history of jurisprudence. At the general election in November, 1855, Hon. Wm. A. Barstow, then the Governor of Wisconsin, was the Democratic candidate for re-election. The candidate of the Republican or opposition party was Hon. Coles Bashford, recently a delegate from the Territory of Arizona in the Fortieth Congress.

The canvassers determined that Mr. Barstow had received the greatest number of votes. In pursuance of that determination a certificate of election was issued to him, signed by the Secretary of State, and authenticated by the great seal of the State, and on the opening of the next political year Mr. Barstow took the oath of office, and was re-inaugurated with imposing ceremonies and much display of military force. Mr. Bashford averred that, in fact, the greater number of legal votes were cast for him, and not for Mr. Barstow. He contended that the canvass was fraudulent and false, and he resolved to try the validity of Mr. Barstow's title by a suit at law. Accordingly he also took the oath of office. On the 15th of January the Attorney-General filed, in the Supreme Court of the State, an information in the nature of quo warranto against the acting Governor. That is supposed to be the only instance in the history of Government, when the people of a State have appealed to the judicial authority to dispossess an incumbent of the executive office. 

Some of the best professional talent in the State was employed in the conduct of the cause, and in its progress party feeling was stirred to its lowest depths. An attempt was made to deter the prosecution by threats that the litigation would be protracted so that no judgment could be obtained during the Gubernatorial term. It was broadly hinted on the argument, and freely asserted by a portion of the press, that, if the court should give judgment for the relator, the respondent, having already the command of the militia of the State, would not submit to the judgment. For the relator appeared, besides Mr. Howe, Mr. E. G. Ryan, Mr. J. H. Knowlton, and the late Postmaster-General, Hon. A. W. Randall, while the defence was managed by Mr. J. E. Arnold, Judge Orton and the present Senator Carpenter. It was expected that Mr. Ryan would lead the prosecution. He was a Democrat in politics, and so was politically opposed to his client; and, moreover, was a lawyer unsurpassed for ripe learning and forensic ability by any member of the profession in the United States. But an unfortunate disagreement between him and the court, in the commencement of the contest, induced his temporary withdrawal from the case, and thereupon the lead was assigned to Mr. Howe.

A sketch of the progress of the case would hardly fail to interest both the professional and the general reader; but space forbids. The prosecution, however, was completely triumphant. In spite of threatened delays, the court unanimously gave judgment for the relator, on the 24th day of March, 1856 — but little more than two months from the commencement of proceedings — and in spite of threatened resistance, the relator was, on the next day, quietly and peaceably installed in the office.

The reputation won by Judge Howe, in the management of that great State trial, gave to his name marked prominence as a candidate for the U. S. Senate in the place of Hon. Henry Dodge, whose term expired on the 4th of March, 1857.

When the Legislature assembled, his election was regarded as almost certain. But no sooner had the canvass for Senator fairly opened, than a novel question was raised in the party, for an explanation of which it is necessary to refer to events that had transpired some years before. In 1854 a fugitive slave from Missouri was arrested at Racine, Wisconsin, taken to Milwaukee, and there thrown into jail for security, while the master was engaged in complying with the legal forms necessary to enable him to reclaim his human property. The fugitive had been treated with great barbarity at the time of his arrest, and popular feeling, inflamed by this circumstance, and by detestation of Slavery and the Fugitive Slave act, became so turbulent that it resulted in the organization of a mob which broke open the jail, released the fugitive, and sent him to Canada. Some of the prominent actors in this proceeding were arrested for violating the provisions of the Fugitive Slave law, but were released upon a writ of habeas corpus, partly upon technical grounds, and partly on the ground that the Fugitive Slave act was unconstitutional. Subsequently the case came before the Supreme Court of the State, and one of the Judges delivered a very elaborate opinion, pronouncing the Fugitive act unconstitutional, and affirming the most ultra doctrines of the State Eights school of Southern politicians, but applying them to the detriment instead of the support of slavery. The decision became at once immensely popular with a great number of radical anti-slavery men in the State, and was thought by them to be an admirable example of capturing the guns of an enemy and turning them against him. This class of Republicans regarded what they termed an anti-State Eights Republican as a little worse than an out and out pro-slavery Democrat. Accordingly, when the senatorial election approached, in the winter of 1857, the friends of other candidates raised the cry of State Eights, and averred that Judge Howe was unsound on that issue. In a caucus of the Republican members of the Legislature a resolution was adopted in substance identical with the first of the celebrated Kentucky resolutions of 1798, declaring the right of each State to be the final judge of the constitutionality of laws of the United States, and in case of infractions upon what it held to be its rights, that it should determine for itself as to the mode and measure of redress. Each of the candidates was requested to declare whether or not he approved of the doctrines of the resolution. Judge Howe alone refused to endorse them. He preferred to remain a private citizen rather than secure a seat in the Senate by endorsing doctrines which he regarded as unsupported by the Constitution, and in practice fatal to the perpetuity of the Union. The result was that he was defeated, and the Hon. James K. Doolittle elected. But his defeat on such grounds attached to him, by the strongest ties of personal esteem and devotion, a large body of influential members of the party who were in harmony with him on the question of State Sovereignty. They agreed with their opponents that the Fugitive Slave law was an infamous statute, and they thought it unconstitutional; but they denied that a State court possessed the right of passing final judgment upon a law of the United States. Upon this question a dangerous division continued among tho Republicans of Wisconsin, until the breaking out of the rebellion. Judge Howe was the leader of the Republicans who repudiated the State Sovereignty theory. At every Republican State Convention the question arose, and the opponents of State Sovereignty, only by dint of the most strenuous efforts, succeeded in fighting off an endorsement of the principle In the Republican platform of the State. On two occasions, once before a Republican State Convention, and again in the Assembly Chamber during the session of the Legislature, Judge Howe met in debate the ablest and most brilliant champions of the State Sovereignty theory, the Hon. Carl Schurz, then a resident of Wisconsin, and Judge A. D. Smith, the author of the opinion pronouncing the Fugitive law null and void, and achieved a signal victory over them in the argument of the question. The next senatorial election in Wisconsin occurred in the winter of 1861. In the pretended secession of the Southern States, justified upon the ground of the sovereignty of each State, the people had a practical illustration of the ultimate consequence of the doctrine. It was the vindication of Judge Howe. The quality of his Republicanism was no longer questioned, and a Republican Legislature elected him to the Senate. From that time to the present ne has borne himself in all the new and perplexing crises, that have occurred in our political history in such a manner as to secure the approbation of his constituents, and the esteem and confidence of his associates. During the war he served on the Senate Committee on Finance, and several minor committees, and in the Fortieth Congress was Chairman of the Committee on Claims, and a member of the Committee on Appropriations, and on the Public Library. He was among the earliest advocates of Emancipation, of Universal Suffrage, and of the right and expediency of establishing Territorial Governments over those districts of country in which Civil Government was overthrown by Rebellion. As a consequence he was among the foremost of those who took issue with the policy of President Johnson—and some of his ablest speeches in the Senate were delivered in the winter of 1865-1866, at the time when the division between the Radical and the Johnson Republicans began to assume the form of an open rupture.

Upon the expiration of his term, in 1867, Senator Howe was reelected. Few representatives have ever received so signal evidence of the esteem and confidence of their constituency as was awarded him on that occasion. Every Republican member of the Legislature favored his re-election. No other candidate was spoken of. He was the unanimous choice of his party. In his senatorial career, he had displayed so much of ability, so much of consistency and steadfast adherence to principle, that the people of his State demanded his re-election with unexampled unanimity. As a consequence, no legislative caucus was held to nominate a candidate for Senator, and Mr. Howe received the unanimous vote of the Republican members when the election occurred.

In politics, as may be gathered from the above, Senator Howe is a Radical. He would abridge no man's rights on account of creed, or race, or complexion. As a speaker, he is deliberate and impressive, with a ready command of language and all the resources of extemporaneous oratory. He appears, indeed, to the best advantage in the sudden exigencies of debate, the excitement of the occasion stimulating his faculties, and rousing them to the fullest action. In private life, he is social and genial, attaching men to him by his cordiality and frankness, and winning their enduring respect by his purity of character and genuine worth.

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.