Howe

Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-
Minded Youth, declared these labors to be the
chief jewel in his crown. He agitated for prison
reform and the aiding of discharged convicts;
helped Dorothea Dix by private and public sup-
port in her campaign for the humanitarian care
of the insane; and from 1865 to 1874 he was
chairman of the Massachusetts Board of State
Charities, the first in America, and wrote its an-
nual reports, therein stating his principles which
have since become the orthodoxy of charity (F.
G. Peabody, Hibbert Journal, post). Though
tardy in joining the anti-slavery movement he
finally plunged headlong into it, opening his
town office as a rallying point. He served for the
needed years as chairman and whip of a Boston
vigilance committee, self-constituted, to prevent
the forcible return South of fugitive slaves.
With Julia (Ward) Howe [g.z/.], whom he mar-
ried Apr. 27, 1843, he was co-editor for a while
of the anti-slavery paper, The Commonwealth.
He even ran for Congress in 1846 as the candi-
date of the "Conscience" Whigs; but here he suf-
fered defeat, as he did also for reelection to the
Boston school committee. Politics, indeed, was
no forte of his, while action as a free lance was.
Therefore, though much of the time ill from
overwork, he threw himself with better success
into helping save Kansas to the Free-Soilers. In
this enterprise, as in his aiding and abetting the
purposes of John Brown, he obeyed conscience
rather than law. There are those who cannot
excuse him for this "obfuscation," especially for
his public letter disclaiming advance knowledge
of Brown's raid, and his own subsequent disap-
pearing into Canada. Later, when public excite-
ment had quieted, he went to Washington and
testified before a Senate committee of inquiry
regarding his knowledge of the affair. During
the Civil War he was an active and useful mem-
ber of the Sanitary Commission. Secretary
Stanton appointed him one of the President's In-
quiry Commission. He supported his friend,
Senator Sumner, in behalf of negro suffrage as a
political measure, and the education of freed-
men as essential to their citizenship.

In 1866-67 he was protagonist in raising funds
and clothing for the suffering Cretans, then wag-
ing a losing fight for freedom, and, accompanied
by wife and children, again went to Greece to
manage the distribution of supplies. He even
stole into Crete itself, a hazardous undertaking,
and while at Athens opened an industrial school
for the Cretan refugees. In 1871, President
Grant appointed Howe, Senator Wade of Ohio,
and President White of Cornell, commissioners
to report on the advisability of the United States'

Howe

annexing the island of Santo Domingo. After
spending about two months there they recom-
mended such action, advice which most people
considered quixotic, "He was never the hero
of his own tale," says Dr. F. H. Hedge (Julia
Ward Howe, Memoir, p. 95). He disliked being
in the limelight, and his greater services were
temporarily overshadowed by his gifted wife who
long outlived him. His aggressive personality
inspired both love and fear: he could be harsh
and exacting or tender and generous. He had a
host of friends; his enemies were few.

[F. B. Sanborn, Dr. S. G. Howe, the Philanthropist
(1891); Julia Ward Howe, Memoir of Dr. Samuel
Gridley Howe (1876); "The Hero," poem by John
Greenleaf Whittier; J. L. Jones, "Samuel Gridley
Howe,J in Charities Review, Dec. 1897; Proc. at the
Celebration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the
Birth of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, Nov. nt IQOT
(1902); F. P. Stearns, "Chevalier Howe/' in Cam-
bridge Sketches (1905) ; Letters and Journals of Sam-
uel Gridley Howe (2 vols., 1906-09), ed. by his daugh-
ter Laura E. Richards; F. G. Peabody, "A Paladin
of Philanthropy," in Hibbert Jour., Oct. 1909; D. W.
Howe, Howe Genealogies . . . Abraham of Roxbury
(1929); J. J. Chapman, Learning and Other Essays
(1910) ; L. E. Richards, Laura Bridgman, The Story
of an Opened Door (1928) ; Boston Transcript, Boston
Herald, Springfield Republican, Jan. 10, 1876; see also
Dickens' Am. Notes (1842) for a short appreciation
of Dr. Howe.] E E A

HOWE, TIMOTHY OTIS (Feb. 24, 1816-

Mar. 25, 1883), senator and postmaster genera],
was born in Livermore, Me., the son of Betsy
(Howard) and Dr. Timothy Howe, and the de-
scendant of John Howe, who emigrated from
England before 1639 and settled in Sudbury,
Mass. 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, Vt, where he practised until he
moved to Greenbay, Wis., in 1845. &1 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 prac-
tice. 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 sover-
eignty doctrine, embodied in the Kentucky reso-
lution 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), re-

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