The Manliest Man: Samuel G. Howe and the Contours of Nineteenth-Century American Reform

by James W. Trent

A native of Boston and a physician by training, Samuel G. Howe (1801–1876)led a remarkable life. He was a veteran of the Greek War of Independence,a fervent abolitionist, and the founder of both the Perkins School for the Blind and the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Children. Married to Julia Ward Howe, author of “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” he counted
among his friends Senator Charles Sumner, public school advocate Horace Mann, and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The first full-length biography of Samuel G. Howe in more than fifty years, The Manliest Man explores his life through private letters and personal and public documents. It offers an original view of the reformer’s personal life, his association with social causes of his time, and his efforts to shape those causes in ways that allowed for the greater inclusion of devalued people in the mainstream of American life.

See also: www.samuelgridleyhowe.net

Genres: History, Biography

326 pages, Paperback

First published July 18, 2012

About the author

James W. Trent, Jr. was born in Durham, North Carolina. He received his undergraduate degree at Wake Forest University. He has masters degrees from Duke University and the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. He completed his Ph.D. degree at Brandeis University. His first book, Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States (1994) won the Hervey B. Wilbur Award of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. His second book, Mental Retardation in American: An Historical Reader (2004) was co-edited with Steven Noll. A third book, The Manliest Man: Samuel G. Howe and the Contours of Nineteenth-Century American Reform (2012) is a biography of a controversial and fascinating figure in the context of rapid social and political change. In 2016, Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Intellectual Disability in the United States appeared, representing an updated and expanded edition of the 1994 book. Trent is Visiting Scholar at the Heller School, Brandeis University.

Reviews

[David Montgomery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Samuel Howe is one of the more remarkable men you've probably never heard of. As a young men he traveled to Greece to volunteer in that country's rebellion — one of the few such foreign volunteers to emerge with his life and ideals intact. He organized a pioneering humanitarian effort to save thousands of Greek lives from famine. Then he returned home and founded a pioneering facility for treating the blind, where he championed the idea that the disabled should live in society rather than be shut away. He (somewhat belatedly) became a devoted abolitionist and was one of the "Secret Six" who supported John Brown's works in Kansas and Harper's Ferry. Howe's wife was Julia Ward Howe, the author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." During the Civil War, he helped direct the Union's Sanitary Commission.

Howe had flaws, too, which this generally admiring biography doesn't shy away from: his marriage had some rocky moments, he was a latecomer to abolitionism, and late in life he got suckered by promoters into supporting the annexation of what became the Dominican Republic. But overall this is a fascinating life of a distinguished man who we can admire from our time, not just his.