Benjamin Howard was an American soldier, congressman, and territorial governor.
Background
He was born in Virginia, in 1760, the only son of John Howard. His family moved across the mountains into the Kentucky regions just before the outbreak of the Revolution, settling at Boonesboro, where Richard Henderson was trying to establish his Transylvania colony. John Howard was successful in getting hold of two one-thousand-acre tracts of land in the scramble for land that followed. He lived to be 103 years old.
Education
What little schooling Benjamin got seems to have come to him while he was yet in Virginia.
Career
In 1801 and 1802 he represented Fayette County in the lower house of the Kentucky legislature. A few years later he was elected to the Tenth Congress (1807 - 09). He appeared on the opening day of his first term, and a few weeks later was apologizing in a speech for his forwardness in presuming to take a part so early. He assumed a broad, national outlook in his political career, loyally standing behind the administration. Though not classed as one of the "War Hawks, " he nevertheless worked actively for a larger army and for the protection of his country's interests. Reelected to the Eleventh Congress, he resigned during its second session when, in April 1810, President Madison, who had been noting Howard's loyal support, appointed him governor of the District of Louisiana, the organized part of the Louisiana Purchase remaining after the Territory of Orleans (the southern part) had been cut off. When in 1812 the latter division was admitted into the Union as the state of Louisiana and the District of Louisiana was renamed the Territory of Missouri, Howard was continued as the governor. On March 12, 1813, however, when he was appointed brigadier-general in the United States Army, and assigned to the Eighth Military Department, which embraced the regions west of the Mississippi River, he resigned from the governorship. He took little part in the war beyond a few raids against the Indians, and he died in St. Louis before the end of hostilities.