James Bruen Howell was an American lawyer, judge, postmaster, U.S. senator, and commissioner of the Southern Claims Commission.
Background
James Bruen was born July 4, 1816, in Morristown, New Jersey, United States; the son of Elias Howell and Eliza Howell. His father served in the state Senate and in Congress. In 1819 his father, Elias Howell, moved the family to a farm in Licking County, Ohio, about 10 miles from Newark. The schooling available to the younger Howell in that rural setting was extremely limited, but Elias Howell was a successful politician who moved the family to Newark in 1826, which then gave James the opportunity for formal education.
Education
In 1833 James graduated from high school. In 1837 he graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, United States, and then spent two years studying law under Judge Hocking H. Hunter in Lancaster.
In 1839 Howell was admitted to the bar and returned to Newark. In 1840 he ran for prosecuting attorney in Licking County as a Whig but was defeated. Suffering from a sickly constitution, he moved west in 1841, hoping to find better health. After brief stops in Chicago and Muscatine, he finally settled in Keosauqua, Iowa, and eventually shared a legal practice with James H. Cowles there. He bought the Des Moines Valley Whig in 1845 and moved it to Keokuk in 1849, buying the Keokuk Register in the process and merging the two newspapers into the weekly Valley Whig & Keokuk Register. In 1854 the newspaper was published daily under the name Keokuk Daily Whig, becoming the Keokuk Daily Gate City in 1855. The Daily Gate City continues to be published.
Besides publishing and editing his newspaper, Howell was very active in politics, using the newspaper as a platform to promote his ideals. He was one of the first to help organize the Iowa Republican Party, and in 1856 he was a delegate to the first Republican National Convention, nominating John C. Frémont for president. Howell served as the Keokuk postmaster from 1861 to 1866 and was elected to finish James W. Grimes’s U.S. Senate term, from 1870 to 1871.
President Ulysses S. Grant then selected him in 1871 to serve as one of three commissioners on the Court of Southern Claims, an appointment Howell kept until the Southern Claims Commission was dissolved in 1880. Howell’s appointment may have been influenced by his being the first Iowa newspaper editor to endorse Grant for president in 1868. After the Civil War, Southerners who had been forced to supply Union troops with food, livestock, and other goods were able to submit claims for reimbursement to the U.S. government. During the life of the Southern Claims Commission, 22,298 claims were made totaling more than $60 million. The commission approved only 7,092 claims for $4.6 million. Claimants were required to prove not only that they had given up the supplies, but also that they were loyal to the Union. The commission interviewed about 220,000 witnesses and pored over local poll books that registered votes for secession.
As a senator, Howell had voted against allowing the Southern claims at all, believing that the government was not responsible for paying the claims. Southerners were not happy that three Northern men were appointed as commissioners, and the Daily Morning Chronicle in Washington, D.C., published an editorial about the appointments that said of Howell, “The Southern men...think that while Mr. Howell is an honest man, he is not a just or unprejudiced man.” When the commissioners were up for reappointment, there was much discussion of allowing a Southerner to serve. Howell urged President Rutherford B. Hayes to keep the three original commissioners: “all they want is more claims and larger amounts allowed than they can get at our hands.” Hayes opted to keep the original commissioners in place. Howell’s work for the Southern Claims Commission ended on March 10, 1880. He died in Keokuk on June 17 the same year.
Achievements
Howell is best remembered as having served as the United States Senator from Iowa for slightly over one year.
Politics
A loyal Whig, James early took leadership in that party in Iowa, but with the joining of the issue over the extension of slavery, 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 Lincoln and opposed the administration only when it seemed to falter in its policy regarding slavery. Inevitably he was a pronounced radical in bitter opposition to Johnson's Reconstruction policy. He was a consistent supporter of Grant.
Connections
On November 1, 1842, Howell married Isabella Richards. They had three children, but only their daughter Mary survived to adulthood. Isabella died in Keosauqua, on February 27, 1847. Howell remarried on October 23, 1850, to Mary Ann Bowen. They had seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood. Mary Ann died on June 15, 1903, and was buried in Oakland Cemetery in Keokuk, alongside her husband and his daughter Mary.
The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa
Iowa has been blessed with citizens of strong character who have made invaluable contributions to the state and to the nation. In the 1930s alone, such towering figures as John L. Lewis, Henry A. Wallace, and Herbert Hoover hugely influenced the nation’s affairs.
