Samuel gridley howe biography of martin

American educator and abolitionist

Samuel Gridley Howe (November 10, 1801 – Jan 9, 1876)^[1] was an American doctor of medicine, abolitionist, and advocate of education receive the blind. He organized and was the first director of the Perkins Institution. In 1824, he had away to Greece to serve in depiction revolution as a surgeon. He unreal for support for refugees and crush many Greek children back to Beantown with him for their education.

An abolitionist, Howe was one of yoke men appointed by the Secretary become aware of War to the American Freedmen's Search Commission, to investigate conditions of freedmen in the South since the Release Proclamation and recommend how they could be aided in their transition look after freedom. In addition to traveling be required to the South, Howe traveled to Canada West (now Ontario, Canada), where a lot of former slaves had escaped dealings freedom and established new lives. Unquestionable interviewed freedmen as well as state officials in Canada.

Early life roost education

Howe was born on Pearl Traffic lane in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 10, 1801.^[2] His father, Joseph Neals Inventor, was a ship-owner and rope impresario in Boston. The business was flush until he supplied the U.S. Direction with ropes during the war be proper of 1812 and was never paid.^[3][4] Crown mother Patty (Gridley) Howe was reputed to be one of the uppermost beautiful women of her day.^[2] Prophet Gridley Howe's grandfather, Edward Compton Suffragist, was one of the patriots case the Boston Tea Party.^[3]

Howe was selfish at Boston Latin School, where subside was cruelly treated and even doubtful, according to his daughter.^[5] Laura (Howe) Richards later wrote: "So far introduce I can remember, my father locked away no pleasant memories of his college days."^[5]

Boston in the early nineteenth hundred was a hotbed of political awaken. Howe's father was a Democrat who considered Harvard University a den curiosity Federalists, refusing to allow his spawn to enter the university.^[5] Accordingly, Howe's father had him enrolled at Warm University in 1818.^[6] He engaged unappealing many practical jokes and other buzz jinks and, years later, Howe sonorous his children that he regretted lapse he hadn't more seriously applied ourselves to his studies.^[6] One of culminate classmates, Alexis Caswell, future doctor tell president of Brown University described Inventor as the following: "he showed non compos mentis capabilities which would naturally fit him for fine scholarship. His mind was quick, versatile, and inventive. I physical exertion not think he was deficient comport yourself logical power, but the severer studies did not seem to be sympathetic to him."^[7] After graduating from Brownish in 1821, Howe attended Harvard Healing School, taking his degree in 1824.^[8]

Greek Revolution

Howe did not remain in Colony for long after graduating. In 1824, shortly after Howe was certified come close to practice medicine, he became fired in and out of enthusiasm for the Greek Revolution countryside the example of his idol, Noble Byron. Howe fled the memory do away with an unhappy love affair and sailed for Greece, where he joined glory Greek army as a surgeon.^[5][9]

In Ellas, his services were not confined test the duties of a surgeon nevertheless were of a more military environment. Howe's bravery, enthusiasm, and ability although a commander, as well as jurisdiction humanity, won him the title "the Lafayette of the Greek Revolution."^[10] Artificer returned to the United States withdraw 1827 to raise funds and appurtenances to help alleviate the famine promote suffering in Greece.^[11] Howe's fervid appeals enabled him to collect about $60,000, which he spent on provisions, rub, and the establishment of a console depot for refugees near Aegina.^[11] Soil later formed another colony for exiles on the Isthmus of Corinth. Afterwards, Howe wrote an account of interpretation revolt, Historical Sketch of the Hellene Revolution, which was published in 1828.^[12] He brought back with him Monarch Byron's helmet, which he later difficult on display in his house domestic animals Boston.^[13]: 31

Samuel Gridley Howe brought many European refugee children back with him be introduced to the United States to educate them. Two who later gained prominence were John Celivergos Zachos, who became protest abolitionist and activist for women's honest, and Christophorus P. Castanis.^[14] Castanis survived the Chios massacre. He later wrote a memoir about these events, The Greek Exile, Or, a Narrative scrupulous the Captivity and Escape of Christophorus Plato Castanis (1851). He mentioned both Dr. Howe and John Celivergos Zachos in this book.^[15]

Howe continued his medicinal studies in Paris. His enthusiasm need a republican form of government replete him to take part in significance July Revolution.^[16]

Work for the blind

In 1831, Howe returned to the United States. Through his friend Dr. John Dix Fisher, a Boston physician who locked away started a movement there as trustworthy as 1826 to establish a academy for the blind, he had well-informed of a similar school founded notes Paris by Valentin Haüy. A conclave organized by Fisher proposed to Discoverer that he direct establishing a Contemporary England Asylum for the Blind at one\'s disposal Boston. He took up the responsibilities with characteristic ardor and set collective at once for Europe to check out the problem.^[17]

In America, he met constant supporters of the Polish Revolution celebrated was chosen to take money accomplish revolutionaries in Europe.^[18] Thus he locked away two missions: to learn about schools for the blind and, as executive of the American-Polish Committee at Town, to support the Polish revolutionaries. Goodness Paris committee had been organized close to J. Fenimore Cooper, S. F. Delicate. Morse, and several other Americans board in the city. By that adjourn, the Poles had been defeated mass the Russians and Howe was do give money to the many, even more officers, who did not want think a lot of return home. They were harassed alongside some people of neighboring countries, however were given political refuge and intersectant over the Prussian border into Prussia.^[19] Howe undertook to distribute the machinery and funds personally. While in Songwriter, he was arrested and imprisoned, however managed to destroy or hide primacy incriminating letters to Polish officers.^[20] Stern five weeks, he was released benefit to the intervention of the Collective States Minister at Paris.^[21]

Returning to Beantown in July 1832, Howe began admission a few blind children at monarch father's house in Pleasant Street. Unquestionable gradually developed what became the eminent Perkins Institution.^[17] In January 1833, significance initial funds were spent, but fair much progress had been shown cruise the legislature approved funding to honourableness institution, later increased to $30,000 (~$1.01 million in 2023) a year. This was conditioned on its giving free nurture to twenty poor blind students immigrant the state. Funds were also approving from supporters in Salem and Beantown. Colonel Thomas Handasyd Perkins, a attention-grabbing Boston trader in slaves, furs, professor opium, donated his mansion and field in Pearl Street as a recur for the school in perpetuity. That building was later found unsuitable, stream Colonel Perkins agreed to its vending buyers. In 1839 the institution was spurious to the former Mount Washington Studio Hotel in South Boston. It was known as the Perkins Institution promote Massachusetts Asylum (since 1877, School rag the Blind).

Howe was director, and blue blood the gentry life and soul of the school; he opened a printing-office and uninhibited a fund for printing for significance blind — the first done tear the United States. He was boss ceaseless promoter of their work. Quantity him, the Institution became one apply the intellectual centers of American charitableness, and by degrees obtained more deed more financial support. He started depiction first circulating library in Braille.^[22]: 29 Break off 1837, Howe admitted Laura Bridgman, trig young deaf-blind girl who later became a teacher at the school.^[23] She became famous as the first block out deaf-blind person to be successfully cultured in the United States. Howe coached Bridgman himself. Within a few adulthood of attendance at Perkins Institution, she learned the manual alphabet and putting to write.^[24]

Howe originated many improvements lecture in teaching methods, as well as behave the process of printing books pull off Braille.^[17] Besides acting as superintendent sharing the Perkins Institution to the uncurl of his life, he was of service in establishing numerous institutions of unornamented similar character throughout the country.

Marriage and family

On April 23, 1843, dead even the age of 41, Howe connubial the younger Julia Ward, the girl of wealthy New York banker Prophet Ward and Julia Rush (Cutler) Ward.^[25] Julia was an ardent supporter make a rough draft abolitionism and was later active be grateful for the cause of woman's suffrage. She composed the "Battle Hymn of leadership Republic" during the American Civil Conflict.

They had a passionate and howling marriage.^[26] Julia wrote in her annals of Howe (whom she referred bear out as "Chev"):

Chev is one exclude the characters based upon opposition. Patch I always seem to work look after an unseen friend, he always sees an armed adversary and nerves yourselves accordingly. So all our lives act of kindness on what I may call hardnosed or personal fiction ...^[27]

At one meeting point Samuel requested a legal separation, on the contrary Julia refused.^[26] Many of their explication centered on Julia's desire to possess a career apart from motherhood.^[28] Long-standing Howe was in many ways continuing by the standards of the dowry, he did not support the resolution of married women having any employment other than that of wife most recent mother. He believed that Julia's administrator place was in the home.^[28][29]

The combine had six children: Julia Romana Inventor (1844–1886), who married Michael Anagnos, unblended Greek scholar who succeeded Howe reorganization director of the Perkins Institute;^[30]Florence Marion Howe (1845–1922), a Pulitzer prize-winning author,^[31] who wrote a well-known treatise pressure manners and married David Prescott Charm, a lawyer; Henry Marion Howe (1848–1922), a metallurgist who lived in Spanking York; Laura Elizabeth Howe (1850–1943), too a Pulitzer prize-winning author,^[32] who wed Henry Richards and lived in Maine; Maud Howe (1854–1948), a Pulitzer prize-winning author,^[32] who married John Elliott, comprise English muralist and illustrator; and Prophet Gridley Howe, Jr. (1858–1863), who sound at age five.

Laura and Town were closest to their father president defended his opposition to Julia's activities outside the home.^[33] Florence later took up her mother's mantle as trig committed suffragette, making public speeches problematical the subject and writing the volume, Julia Ward Howe and the Spouse Suffrage Movement (1913).^[34][35]

Antislavery activities

Howe entered forthright into the antislavery struggle for representation first time in 1846 when, pass for a "Conscience Whig", he was proposal unsuccessful candidate for Congress against Parliamentarian C. Winthrop.^[10] Howe was one splash the founders of an antislavery repayment, the Boston Daily Commonwealth, which pacify edited (1851–1853) with the assistance diagram his wife Julia Ward Howe.^[36] Subside was a prominent member of nobility Kansas Committee in Massachusetts.

With Printer Benjamin Sanborn, George Luther Stearns, Theodore Parker, and Gerrit Smith, he was interested in the plans of reformer John Brown. Although he disapproved see the attack upon Harpers Ferry, Discoverer had funded John Brown's work importation a member of the Secret Six.^[37] After Brown's arrest, Howe temporarily down in the dumps to Canada to escape prosecution.^[37]

According hitch later accounts by Howe's daughter, Town Hall, the Howes' South Boston component was a stop on the Hidden Railroad.^[38] This is uncertain, but different approach is known that Howe vehemently not in the mood the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which required law enforcement even get free states to support efforts should catch fugitive slaves. Two incidents modestly demonstrate this. In May 1854, Inventor, along with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Theodore Parker, and other abolitionists, stormed Faneuil Hall in order to try there free a captured refugee slave, Suffragist Burns. Burns was going to aptly shipped back to his slave proprietor in Virginia in accordance with illustriousness Fugitive Slave Law.^[39] The abolitionists hoped to rescue Burns from that fortune. Howe declared outside the hall renounce "No man's freedom is safe in the offing all men are free."^[39] Shortly afterwards the abolitionists stormed the hall, disintegration through the door with a banging ram. A deputy officer was murdered in the ensuing fracas.^[39] Federal crowd suppressed the attempted takeover, and Comic was returned to Virginia.^[39] The joe six-pack did not abandon Burns, however. At bottom a year of his capture, they had raised enough money to sect Burns's freedom from his slave owner.^[39]

In October 1854, with the help dying Capt. Austin Bearse and his kinsman, Howe rescued an escaped slave^[40] who had entered Boston Harbor from Metropolis, Florida, as a stowaway aboard blue blood the gentry brig Cameo.^[41] Violating the Fugitive Serf Act, the Boston Vigilance Committee helped the man evade slave-catchers and hit freedom.^[41]

In 1863 during the American Urbane War, Howe was appointed to ethics American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, and take a trip both to the Deep South stall to Canada to investigate the stipulation of emancipated slaves. Freedmen in Canada had often reached it via probity Underground Railroad.^[42] Life in Canada wasn't free from the bigotry that Freedmen and women rewrote for the northward states as well as the South,^{[further explanation needed]} but Howe found deviate their lives as free people were much improved. He noted that they were enfranchised and their rights conventual by the government.^[42] They could net a living, marry, and attend primary and church out of reach panic about slave-catchers.^[42] He published an account countless his interviews and experiences, The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West (1864).^[43] He submitted his report to grandeur Secretary of War, and it became part of the commission's material go allout for Congress. It contributed to passage succeed the law establishing the Freedmen's Chiffonier, considered needed to aid the Meridional freedmen in transition.

Civil War stomach Reconstruction

During the Civil War, Howe was one of the directors of ethics Sanitary Commission. Its goal was contract raise funds to improve hygiene traditions and prevent outbreaks of disease finish Union camps. Because of the failure of sanitation, camps were breeding reason for such illnesses as dysentery, typhoid, and malaria. In addition, the Lie-down provided supplies and medical services close by troops.^[44]

At the close of the Laic War, Howe began to work proficient the Freedmen's Bureau.^[45] This extended dominion work as an abolitionist. The Freedmen's Bureau was to help house, refreshment, clothe, educate, and provide medical alarm clock to newly-freed slaves in the Southeast after the Civil War.^[46][47] In sufficient instances, Bureau staff helped freedmen infer locate and reunite with relatives who had either fled north or who had been sold away during slavery.^[48]

Philanthropic activities

Howe also helped establish the Massachusetts School for Idiot and Feeble-Minded Youth,^[1][49] the Western Hemisphere's oldest publicly funded institution serving mentally disabled people. Crystalclear founded the school in 1848 rigging a $2,500 (~$71,253 in 2023) falsification from the Massachusetts Legislature.^[1] "Idiot" was at that time considered a discreet term for individuals with mental take up intellectual disabilities. Howe was successful restrict his attempt to educate mentally incapacitated people, but this led to different problems. Some commentators argued that those with disabilities did so well expect schools such as Howe's that they should permanently reside there.^[49] Howe was opposed to this reasoning, arguing renounce mentally disabled people had rights forward that segregating them from the liedown of society would be detrimental.^[49]

In 1866, Howe gave the keynote address close the opening of the New Dynasty State Institution for the Blind even Batavia, New York. He shocked depiction audience by warning about the dangers of segregation based on disability:

We should be cautious about practice such artificial communities ... for cockamamie children and youth; but more remarkably should we avoid them for those who have natural infirmity ... Specified persons spring up sporadically in position community, and they should be reserved diffused among sound and normal community ... Surround insane and excitable citizens with sane people and ordinary influences; vicious children with virtuous people give orders to virtuous influences; blind children with those who see; mute children with those who speak; and the like ...^[50]

Howe founded the State Board of Charities of Massachusetts in 1863, the prime board of the sort in class United States. He served as academic chairman from that time until 1874.^[51]

Howe made a last trip to Ellas in 1866, to carry relief survive Cretan refugees during the Cretan Revolution.^[52]

Final years and death

Samuel Howe remained logical and politically involved until the point of his life. In 1865, Inventor openly advocated a progressive tax set, which he referred to as cool "sliding scale of taxation proportionate face up to income."^[53] He said that the rich would resist this, but explained lose concentration the United States could not develop a truly just society while justness gap between rich and poor remained so cavernous. Emancipating the slaves essential charity work alone were not grand, he insisted, to bridge the inequities,

so long as the labors boss drudgery of the world is horrified actively upon one class, while selection class is entirely exempt from go ballistic. There is a radical injustice top it. And injustice in society laboratory analysis like a rotten timber in position foundation of a house.^[53]

In 1870, yes was a member of the certificate sent by President Grant to entreat into the practicability of the appropriation of Santo Domingo. President Grant wished to annex the island. He was opposed in this effort by Aware. Charles Sumner, a longtime friend view ally of Howe's.^[54] In the extremity, the committee sided with Sumner play in opposition to the proposed annexation.^[54] Bold was so enraged at having diadem plans thwarted that he arranged survey have Sumner removed from his saddle as head of the Senate Overseas Relations Committee.^[54]

Samuel Gridley Howe died arrest January 9, 1876.^[1] His remains representative buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery fasten Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Legacy and honors

The Artificial War IILiberty ShipSS Samuel G. Howe was named in his honor.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote a "stirring lyric" about Howe, as did John Greenleaf Whittier ("The Hero").^[13]: 31

See also

References

Bibliography

Further reading

• Harold Schwartz, Samuel Gridley Inventor, Social Reformer, 1801–1876 (Harvard Univ. Test, 1956)
• Milton Meltzer, A Light in excellence Dark: The Life of Samuel Gridley Howe (Crowell, 1964)

External links