Christopher Gadsden, of Charleston, whom Howe at once challenged. They met at Cannonsburg, 13 Aug., 1778. Howe's ball grazed Gadsden's ear, and the latter fired in the air, after which the combatants became reconciled. Maj. John Andre commemorated the affair in a humorous poem of eighteen stanzas. In compliance with the solicitations of South Carolina and Georgia, Howe was then superseded by Gen. Benjamin Lincoln in command of the southern department, and was ordered to join Washington on the Hudson. He was in command at West Point in 1780, and in 1781 led the troops that were sent to quell the mutiny in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey regiments, afterward receiving the thanks of Washington for his judicious performance of this duty. In June, 1783, he was ordered on a similar expedition to Philadelphia. In May, 1785, he was appointed by congress to treat with* the western Indians. Returning to North Carolina a few months later he was received with public honors and elected to the legislature, but was attacked with fever, and died before taking his seat.
HOWE, Samuel Gridley, philanthropist, b. in
Boston, Mass., 10 Nov., 1801; d. there, 9 Jan., 1876.
He was graduated at Brown in 1821, and at the
Harvard medical school in 1824. After completing
his studies he went to Greece, where he served
as surgeon in the war for the independence in
1824-'7, and then as the head of the regular surgical
service, which he established in that country.
In 1827 he returned to the United States in order
to obtain help for the Greeks when they were
threatened with a famine, and later founded a
colony on the isthmus of Corinth, but in consequence
of prostration by swamp-fever he was
obliged in 1830 to leave the country. In 1831,
his attention having been called to the need of
schools for the blind, for whose education no
provision had been made in this country, he again
visited Europe in order to study the methods of
instruction then in use for the purpose of acquiring
information concerning the education of the
blind. While in Paris he was made president of
the Polish committee. In his efforts to convey and
distribute funds for the relief of a detachment of
the Polish army that had crossed into Prussia, he
was arrested by the Prussian authorities, but, after
six weeks' imprisonment, was taken to the French
frontier by night and liberated. On his return to
Boston in 1832 he gathered several blind pupils at
his father's house, and thus gave origin to the
school which was afterward known as the Perkins
institution, and of which he was the first
superintendent, continuing in this office until his death.
His greatest achievement in this direction was the
education of Laura Bridgman (q. v.). Dr. Howe also
took an active part in founding the experimental
school for the training of idiots, which resulted in
the organization of the Massachusetts school for
idiotic and feeble-minded youth in 1851. He was
actively engaged in the anti-slavery movement, and
was a Free-soil candidate for congress from Boston
in 1846. During 1851-'3 he edited the “Commonwealth.”
Dr. Howe took an active part in the
sanitary movement in behalf of the soldiers during
the civil war. In 1867 he again went to Greece as
bearer of supplies for the Cretans in their struggle
with the Turks, and subsequently edited in Boston
“The Cretan.” He was appointed, in 1871, one of
the commissioners to visit Santo Domingo and
report upon the question of the annexation of that
island to the United States, of which he became an
earnest advocate. In 1868 he received the degree
of LL. D. from Brown. His publications include
letters on topics of the time; various reports,
especially those of the Massachusetts commissioners
of idiots (Boston, 1847-'8); “Historical Sketch of
the Greek Revolution” (New York, 1828); and a
“Reader for the Blind,” printed in raised characters
(1839). See “Memoir of Dr. Samuel G. Howe,”
by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe (Boston, 1876). —
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His wife, Julia Ward, b. in New York city, 27 May, 1819, is the daughter of Samuel Ward, a New York banker. Her mother, Julia Rush Ward, was the author of various occasional poems. Julia was carefully educated, partly at home and partly in private schools in New York. Her tutor in German and Latin was Dr. Joseph G. Cogswell. At an early age Miss Ward wrote plays and poems. After her father's death she visited Boston, and met there Dr. Howe, whom she married in 1843. She afterward continued her studies, learned to speak fluently in Italian, French, and Greek, and became a student of Kant, Hegel, Spinoza, Comte, and Fichte. She also wrote philosophical essays, which she read at her house before her literary friends. For some time before the civil war she conducted with her husband the Boston “Commonwealth,” an anti-slavery paper. In 1861, while on a visit to the camps near Washington, with Gov. John A. Andrew and other friends, Mrs. Howe wrote the “Battle-Hymn of the Republic,” which soon became popular. She espoused the woman-suffrage movement in 1869, and was one of the founders of the New England women's club, of which she has been president since 1872. She has also presided over several similar associations, including the American woman-suffrage association. In 1872 she was a delegate to the World's prison reform congress in London, and in the same year aided in founding the Woman's peace association there. In 1884-'5 she presided over the Woman's branch of the New Orleans exposition. She has delivered numerous lectures, and has often addressed the Massachusetts legislature in aid of reforms. She has preached in Rome, Italy, Santo Domingo, and from Unitarian pulpits in this country. She has also read lectures at the Concord school of philosophy. Mrs. Howe has published two volumes of poems, entitled “Passion Flowers” (Boston, 1854), and “Words for the Hour”(1857); “The World's Own,” a drama, which was acted at Wallack's theatre, New York, in 1855 (1857); “A Trip to Cuba” (1860); “Later Lyrics” (1866); “From the Oak to the Olive” (1868); “ Modern Society,” two lectures (1881); and “Life of Margaret Fuller” (1883). She has also edited “Sex and Education,” a reply to Dr. Edward H. Clarke's “Sex in Education” (1874); and wrote for Edwin Booth, in 1858, “Hippolytus,” a tragedy, which has been neither acted nor published. — Their daughter, Julia Romana, educator, b. in Rome, Italy, 12 March, 1844; d. in Boston, Mass., 10 March, 1886, became proficient in history and languages, and was an instructor in the Perkins institution, where at one time she taught German to a blind class so well that her pupils were able to converse fluently in that language. She was the
