Howell Cobb

For other uses, see Howell Cobb (disambiguation).

Howell Cobb
President of the Provisional C.S. Congress
In office February 4, 1861 – February 18, 1862
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Office abolished
United States Secretary of the Treasury
In office March 7, 1857 – December 8, 1860
President	James Buchanan
Preceded by	James Guthrie
Succeeded by	Philip Thomas
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia's 6th district
In office March 4, 1855 – March 4, 1857
Preceded by	Junius Hillyer
Succeeded by	James Jackson
40th Governor of Georgia
In office November 5, 1851 – November 9, 1853
Preceded by	George Towns
Succeeded by	Herschel Johnson
19th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
In office December 22, 1849 – March 4, 1851
Preceded by	Robert Winthrop
Succeeded by	Linn Boyd
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia's 6th district
In office March 4, 1845 – March 4, 1851
Preceded by	Constituency established
Succeeded by	Junius Hillyer
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia's At-large district
In office March 4, 1843 – March 4, 1845
Preceded by	James Meriwether
Succeeded by	Constituency abolished
Personal details
Born	(1815-09-07)September 7, 1815 Jefferson County, Georgia, U.S.
Died	New York City, New York, U.S.
Political party	Democratic (Before 1851; 1853–1868) Constitutional Union (1851–1853)
Alma mater	University of Georgia
Military service
Allegiance	Confederate States of America
Service/branch	Provisional Army of the Confederate States
Years of service	1861–1865
Rank	Major-General
Battles/wars	American Civil War

Thomas Howell Cobb (September 7, 1815 – October 9, 1868) was an American political figure. A Southern Democrat, Cobb was a five-term member of the United States House of Representatives and Speaker of the House from 1849 to 1851. He also served as a Secretary of Treasury under President James Buchanan (1857–1860) and the 40th Governor of Georgia (1851–1853).

He is, however, probably best known as one of the founders of the Confederate States of America, having served as the President of the Provisional Confederate Congress, when delegates of the secessionist states issued creation of the Confederacy.

Cobb served for two weeks between the foundation of the Confederacy and the election of Jefferson Davis as first President. This made him, as the Speaker of the Congress, provisional Head of State at this time.

Early life and education

Born in Jefferson County, Georgia, Cobb was raised in Athens, Georgia, and attended the University of Georgia where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society. He was of Welsh American ancestry. He was admitted to the bar in 1836 and became solicitor general of the western judicial circuit of Georgia.

He married Mary Ann Lamar on May 26, 1835. They would have eleven children, the first in 1838 and the last in 1861. They were John Addison, Zachariah Lamar, Howell, Henry Jackson, Basil Lamar, Mary Ann Lamar, Laura Rootes, Sarah, Andrew Jackson, Elizabeth Craig, and Thomas Reade Rootes. Several did not survive out of childhood, including their last, a son who was named after Howell's brother, Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb.

Career

Congressman

Lucy May Stanton, Howell Cobb, 1912, Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives

He was elected as Democrat to the 28th, 29th, 30th and 31st Congresses. He was chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Mileage during the 28th Congress, and Speaker of the United States House of Representatives during the 31st Congress.

He sided with President Andrew Jackson on the question of nullification; was an efficient supporter of President James K. Polk's administration during the Mexican-American War; and was an ardent advocate of slavery extension into the territories, but when the Compromise of 1850 had been agreed upon, he became its staunch supporter as a Union Democrat. He joined Georgia Whigs Alexander Stephens and Robert Toombs in a statewide campaign to elect delegates to a state convention that overwhelmingly affirmed, in the Georgia Platform, that the state accepted the Compromise as the final resolution to the outstanding slavery issues. On that issue, Cobb was elected governor of Georgia by a large majority.

Speaker of the House

In 1850, as Speaker he would have been next in line to the Presidency for two days due to Vice Presidential vacancy and a president pro tempore not being appointed yet, except he did not meet the minimum eligibility for the presidency of being 35 years old. When Zachary Taylor died on July 9, Vice President Millard Fillmore became President. The president pro tempore of the Senate was not appointed until July 11 when William Rufus de Vane King took that position.

Governor of Georgia

In 1851, he left the House to serve as the Governor of Georgia, holding that post until 1853. He published A Scriptural Examination of the Institution of Slavery (1856).

Return to Congress and Secretary of the Treasury

Bureau of Engraving and Printing portrait of Cobb as Secretary of the Treasury.

He was elected to the 34th Congress and then took the position of Secretary of the Treasury in Buchanan's Cabinet. He served for three years, resigning in December 1860. At one time, Cobb was Buchanan's choice for his successor.

A Founder of the Confederacy

In 1860, Cobb ceased to be a Unionist, and became a leader of the secession movement. He was president of a convention of the seceded states that assembled in Montgomery, Alabama, on February 4, 1861. Under Cobb's guidance, the delegates drafted a constitution for the new Confederacy. He served as President of several sessions of the Confederate Provisional Congress, before resigning to join the military when war erupted.

American Civil War

Cobb in his postbellum days

Cobb joined the Confederate army and was named as colonel of the 16th Georgia Infantry. He was appointed a brigadier general on February 13, 1862, and assigned command of a brigade in what became the Army of Northern Virginia. Between February and June 1862, he represented the Confederate authorities in negotiations with Union officers for an agreement on the exchange of prisoners of war. His efforts in these discussions contributed to the Dix-Hill Cartel accord reached in July 1862.

Cobb saw combat during the Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days Battles. Cobb's brigade played a key role in the fighting at Crampton's Gap during the Battle of South Mountain, especially Crampton's Gap where it arrived at a critical time to delay a Union advance through the gap, but at a bloody cost. His men also fought at the subsequent Battle of Antietam.

In October 1862, Cobb was detached from the Army of Northern Virginia and sent to the District of Middle Florida. He was promoted to major general on September 9, 1863, and placed in command of the District of Georgia and Florida. He suggested the construction of a prisoner-of-war camp in southern Georgia, a location thought to be safe from Union invaders. This idea led to the creation of Andersonville prison. When William T. Sherman's armies entered Georgia during the 1864 Atlanta Campaign and subsequent March to the Sea, General Cobb commanded the Georgia reserve corps. In the spring of 1865, with the Confederacy clearly waning, he and his troops were sent to Columbus, Georgia to help oppose Wilson's Raid. He led the hopeless Confederate resistance in the Battle of Columbus, Georgia on Easter Sunday, April 16, 1865.

During Sherman's March to the Sea, the army camped one night near Cobb's plantation. When Sherman discovered that the house he planned to stay in for the night belonged to Cobb, whom Sherman described in his Memoirs as "one of the leading rebels of the South, then a general in the Southern army," he confiscated Cobb's property and leveled the plantation, instructing his subordinates to "spare nothing."

In the closing days of the war, Cobb fruitlessly opposed General Robert E. Lee's eleventh hour proposal of enlisting slaves into the Confederate army. Fearing that such a move would completely discredit the Confederacy's fundamental justification of slavery, that black people were inferior peoples, he said, "You cannot make soldiers of slaves, or slaves of soldiers. The day you make a soldier of them is the beginning of the end of the Revolution. And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong." Cobb's opposition to Lee's proposal is dramatized in the opera "Appomattox" (composer Philip Glass, librettist Christopher Hampton), which debuted in Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center in November 2015. Cobb's role was sung by Timothy J. Bruno.

Cobb surrendered to the U.S. at Macon, Georgia on April 20, 1865.

Later life and death

Following the end of the Civil War, Cobb returned home and resumed his law practice, but despite pressure from his former constituents and soldiers, he refused to make any public remarks on Reconstruction policy until he received a presidential pardon, although he privately opposed it. Finally receiving that document in early 1868, he then vigorously opposed the Reconstruction Acts, making a series of speeches that summer that bitterly denounced the policies of Radical Republicans in the U.S. Congress.

That autumn, Cobb vacationed in New York City, and died of a heart attack there. His body was returned to Athens, Georgia, for burial in Oconee Hill Cemetery.

Thomas Willis Cobb was a cousin and Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb a younger brother of Howell Cobb. His great uncle and namesake, Howell Cobb, had been a U.S. Congressman from 1807–1812, and then served as an officer in the War of 1812. A niece was Mildred Lewis Rutherford.

See also

• List of signers of the Georgia Ordinance of Secession

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 
•  This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Howell Cobb at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Retrieved on 2009-04-17

Further reading

• Montgomery, Horace, Howell Cobb's Confederate Career. (Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Confederate Publishing, 1959).
• Simpson, John E., Howell Cobb: the Politics of Ambition. (Chicago, Illinois: Adams Press, 1973).

External links

• New Georgia Encyclopedia: Howell Cobb (1815-1868)
• U.S. Treasury - Biography of Secretary Howell Cobb
• Howell Cobb entry at the National Governors Association
• Howell Cobb (1815–1868) entry at The Political Graveyard
• "The Late Howell Cobb", Southern Recorder, November 10, 1868. Atlanta Historic Newspaper Archive. Digital Library of Georgia
• Joseph Emerson Brown letters, W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, The University of Alabama.

United States House of Representatives
Preceded by James Meriwether	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia's At-large congressional district (Seat 5) 1843–1845	Constituency abolished
New constituency	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia's 6th congressional district 1845–1851	Succeeded by Junius Hillyer
Preceded by Junius Hillyer	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia's 6th congressional district 1855–1857	Succeeded by James Jackson
Political offices
Preceded by George Towns	Speaker of the United States House of Representatives 1849–1851	Succeeded by Herschel Johnson
Preceded by James Guthrie	United States Secretary of the Treasury 1857–1860	Succeeded by Philip Thomas
New office	President of the Provisional Confederate States Congress 1861–1862	Succeeded by Thomas Bocock as Speaker of the Confederate States House of Representatives
		Succeeded by Robert Hunter as President pro tempore of the Confederate States Senate