Howe

in March 1776, he was sent to South Carolina.
While he was absent his plantation was ravaged
ind his house destroyed by the British. Placed
in command of North Carolina troops in South
Carolina, he was soon given command of the
Southern Department. In 1777 he was made
najor-general and the following year led an un-
successful expedition against St. Augustine. His
position of command in Charleston was bitterly
unpopular in South Carolina and was one of the
:auses of his duel with Christopher Gadsden
tfhich Major Andre satirized in a poem of eigh-
:een stanzas. Late in 1778 Howe was ordered
;o the command of Savannah. Faced there with
ocal opposition, led by the governor, he was pre-
sented from making any adequate preparations
ior defense, and when the British landed he was
corced to evacuate the city. Charges brought
igainst him resulted in a court-martial in which
le was acquitted "with highest honor," but it
tfas obvious that his usefulness in the South was
snded and he was ordered to the North, where,
ifter service at Verplanck's Point and Stony
Point, he was placed in command at West Point.
Later he returned to the field. He was a member
}f the court which tried Major Andre, Smgu-
arly unfortunate as a soldier, he evidently re-
:ained the confidence of Washington, who sent
lim to suppress mutinies among Pennsylvania
ind New Jersey troops in 1781, and in 1783 he
dispersed the mob in Philadelphia which had
iriven Congress from the city. Mustered out in
[783, he returned to North Carolina and resumed
planting. In 1786 he was elected to the House
}f Commons, but, taken ill in Bladen County on
lis way to the session, he died without taking his
seat

[W. L. Saunders, ed., The Colonial Records of N. C.t
/ols. V (1887) and X (1890); Walter Clark, ed., The
State Records of N. C., vols. XI (1895), XIII (1896),
Will (1900); XXII (1907); J. D. Bellamy, Sketch
]f Maj. Gen. Robt. Howe (1882), and "Gen. Robt.
3owe," N. C. Booklet, Jan. 1908; Janet Schaw, Jour.
?/ a Lady of Quality (1925), ed. by E. W. and C. M.
Andrews; Josiah Quincy, ed., Memoir of the Life of
ro$iah Quincyt Junior, of Mass., 1744-177$ (ed. 1874) ;
V. C. Univ. Mag., June, Sept., Oct., Dec. 1853, Apr.,
May 1854; Proc. of a Gen. Court Martial, Held at
°hila., . . . For the Trial of Maj. Gen. Howe, Dec. 7,
1781 (1782).] J.G.deR.H.

HOWE, SAMUEL (June 20, I78s~jan. 20,
[828), lawyer, jurist, was born at Belchertown,
Mass., the youngest of the six children of Dr.
Estes and Susanna (Dwight) Howe. Educated
in the Belchertown public schools and in the New
Salem and Deerfield academies, he entered Wil-
.iams College as a sophomore and was graduated
in 1804. He immediately entered the law office
Df Jabez Upham of Broakfield and in 1805 at-
tended the Litchfield law school in Connecticut.

Howe

After a period spent in the law office of Judge
Theodore Sedgwick of Stockbridge, Mass., he
was admitted to the Berkshire bar in 1807 and
began his practice in Stockbridge. Shortly after
his marriage in September 1807 to Susan, daugh-
ter of Gen. Uriah Tracy of Litchfield, Howe
removed to Worthington, Hampshire County,
Mass., where in the following years he built up
an excellent practice and acquired a high reputa-
tion in his profession. In 1812-13 he served in
the Massachusetts legislature as a representative
from Worthington. He removed to Northamp-
ton in 1820 to become the law partner of Elijah
Hunt Mills Iq.v."]. In July 1821 he was appoint-
ed associate justice of the newly established court
of common pleas for the commonwealth and this
office he occupied with distinction until his early
death at the age of forty-two. He was elected in
1823 a member of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences and in 1826 was chosen by the leg-
islature to fill a vacancy as trustee of Araherst.

In association with his law partners, Mills and
John Hooker Ashmun (later professor at the
Harvard Law School), Howe opened in 1823 a
law school which was organized on the plan of
that at Litchfield and acquired a reputation not
inferior to that of the older institution. The
method of instruction combined formal lectures
and recitations with familiar conversation and
discussion between instructors and students.
Filled with an admiration and love for the sci-
ence of jurisprudence, Howe possessed a zeal and
enthusiasm for his subject which made him an
excellent teacher and attracted many students to
the school. His formal instruction in law was
preserved, in part, in a series of lectures which
were published after his death through the efforts
of his former partner, Ashmun, and others, under
the title, The Practice in Civil Actions and Pro-
ceedings at Law, in Massachusetts (Boston,
1834, Richard S. Fay and Jonathan Chapman,
editors). He also annotated Volumes III and
IV of the Reports of Cases . . . in the Courts of
King's Bench and Common Pleas . . . 48 Geo.
IIL1807, . . . 56 Geo. III. 1816 (4 vols., 1810-
21), published by John Campbell. Outside the
field of the law Howe distinguished himself in
public affairs principally in connection with the
Unitarian controversy which came to a head in
the Northampton Congregational Society in
1824-25 over the question of ministerial ex-
changes. This led the liberal minority, of which
Howe was a leader, to form a separate society,
with Unitarian tenets, as the Second Congrega-
tional Church. Reared in the orthodox Calvin-
istic faith, Howe was brought to an acceptance
of Unitarian beliefs through the influence of his

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