Jacob Merritt Howard

Background

Howard was born in Shaftsbury, Vermont, and attended the district schools and the academies of Bennington and Brattleboro.

Education

He graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1830 and then studied law.

Career

He moved to Detroit, Michigan in 1832 and was admitted to the bar in 1833 and commenced practice in Detroit. Howard was elected as a Whig to the United States House of Representatives for the Twenty-seventh Congress, serving March 4, 1841–March 4, 1843. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1842.

He helped draw up the platform of the first Republican Party convention held in Jackson, Michigan, in 1854.

He was Michigan Attorney General from 1855-1861. Howard was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1861 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Kinsley South. Bingham.

He was reelected in 1865 and in total served from January 1862, to March 1871. He was chairman of the Committee on Pacific Railroads in the Thirty-eighth through Forty-first Congresses.

As a Senator, he was the chief sponsor of the False Claims Acting, a.k.a.

"The Lincoln Law", that permitted whistle blowers to file qui tam lawsuits against government contractors for fraud, with the incentive of receiving a monetary reward based on the recovery made by the federal government. Howard justified giving rewards to whistle blowers, many of whom had engaged in unethical activities themselves, saying:

I have based the upon the old-fashioned idea of holding out a temptation, and ‘setting a rogue to catch a rogue,’ which is the safest and most expeditious way I have ever discovered of bringing rogues to justice. Howard is credited with working closely with Abraham Lincoln in drafting and passing the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery.

In the Senate, he also served on the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

During debate over the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, he argued for including the phrase and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. Howard said:

will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the government of the United States, but will include every other class of person.

Howard died in Detroit and is interred in Elmwood Cemetery.

Politics

Republican Party, Whig Party.

Membership

He was city attorney of Detroit in 1834 and a member of the Michigan State House of Representatives in 1838.

Connections

Father:

Otis Howard

Mother:

Polly (Millington) Howard

Spouse:

Catherine Shaw