Howell

learned telegraphy, and at sixteen entered the
Georgia Military Institute in Marietta. After
two years he went to Sandersville, Ga., and read
law. Then for a year he attended the Lumpkin
Law School, which in 1867 became the law de-
partment of the University of Georgia. Graduat-
ing in 1859, he returned to Sandersville and be-
gan to practise. Upon the outbreak of the Civil
War, he enlisted for a year in the ist Georgia
Regiment At the expiration of his term he
helped organize a battery, of which, Sept. 7,1863,
he became captain; and until the war's end he
served in that capacity, participating in engage-
ments from Virginia to Tennessee and Mis-
sissippi. He was married, June 5,1861, to Julia
A. Erwin, of Erwinton, S. C. It was a con-
siderable time after the war before the courts
were reestablished, and during that interval
Howell engaged in cutting timber on his father's
lands. In 1867, he became reporter on the At-
lanta Intelligencer, but in 1869 he again took up
his law practice. He was soon made solicitor-
general, and from 1875 to 1879 he served in the
state Senate. In 1876 he bought an interest in
the Atlanta Constitution, which he was to retain
till 1897, and, forsaking law, he became editor of
his paper. Since its establishment in 1868 the
Constitution had shown remarkable vitality, but
under the new management it soon became the
most important paper in the South, and among
the most important in America. Its editor was
honest and bold; he had shrewdness and imagi-
nation ; and he wrote trenchantly. He knew how
to surround himself with able assistants, em-
ploying, among others, Henry W. Grady and
Joel Chandler Harris [qq.v.J; and he knew how
to fuse his assistants into harmonious unity.
Perhaps the most notable specific activity of the
paper was its successful advocacy of a new state
constitution (1877), and of the inauguration of
a railroad commission; but its influence against
defeatism and in behalf of integrity and courage,
though less tangible, was in the long run more
valuable. For many years, Howell was among
the leaders of every large public movement un-
dertaken in Atlanta. From 1878 to 1892 he was
a delegate to most of the national conventions of
the Democratic party, and during the Spanish-
American War he was appointed by President
McKinley on an important war commission*
From 1903 to 1905 he was mayor of Atlanta,

EOark Howell, Geneal of the Southern Line of the
Family of Howell (1930); W. J. Northen, Men of
Mark inGa. (1911), vol. Ill; A, D, Candler and C. A.
Evans, Georgia (1906), vol. II; W. P. Reed, Hist, of
Atlanta, Ga. (1889) ; Who's Who in America, 1903-05;
Julia C. Harris, Joel Chandler Harris (1918) ; Memoirs
of Ga. (1895) J Atlanta Constitution, Aug. 6, 7, 1905.]

J.D.W.

Howell

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

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

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