David Howell had a distinguished legal and academic career that extended from the Confederation era through the Early National period. He was born in Morristown, New Jersey, on January 1, 1747, the son of Aaron and Sarah Howell. He received his early education at Hopewell Academy in Hopewell, New Jersey, a Baptist school established by clergyman Isaac Eaton. Howell then went to the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), from which he graduated in 1766. He was preceded at both schools by James Manning, who was nine years older than Howell. When Manning became the founding president of the College of Rhode Island (now Brown University), he asked the young and promising Howell to join him as a faculty member. The newly graduated Howell came to Rhode Island in 1766 and began his fifty-eight-year association with Brown.

Howell was a brilliant and versatile academician who not only taught but also studied. By 1769, he had been admitted to the bar, earned a master’s degree, and attained the position of professor of natural philosophy and mathematics. He also taught French, German, and Hebrew. Such scholarly versatility was essential because, in the early years of the college, Howell and Manning were the only full-time members of the faculty.

When instruction was interrupted in 1779 by the French army’s use of the college’s facilities for quartering, Howell became more active in the field of law, serving as a local justice of the peace in 1779 and as a judge of the state Court of Common Pleas in 1780. Two years later, he became a Rhode Island delegate to the Confederation Congress, serving in that capacity until 1785, when he was succeeded by his colleague, the Reverend James Manning. Howell’s tenure was sometimes stormy. As a representative of Rhode Island’s mercantile interests, he opposed the attempt by Congress to enact the Impost of 1781, a proposed 5 percent national import duty designed to give the general government a degree of fiscal self-sufficiency. Howell’s stance so infuriated his congressional colleagues that they attempted to unseat him. Under the provisions of the Articles of Confederation, the impost needed the unanimous approval of all thirteen states, so it never became law. 

The significance of Rhode Island’s opposition to the impost was later assessed by John Adams, a rather perceptive commentator. In a February 1790 letter to Providence merchant-politician Jabez Bowen during the debate over Rhode Island’s ratification of the new Constitution, Adams stated that “the opposition of Rhode Island to the impost seems to have been the instrument which [divine] providence thought fit to use for the great purpose of establishing the present Constitution.” By that date, Howell was a Federalist supporter of ratification.

Howell’s congressional tenure gave him a broader national outlook, prompting his 1782 letter to Providence merchant Welcome Arnold. He praised his adopted state: “As you go Southward, Government verges towards Aristocracy. In New England alone have we pure and unmixed Democracy, and in Rhode Island & P.P. [Providence Plantations] it is in its Perfection.”

In 1786, the General Assembly, dominated by the newly ascendant Country Party, surprisingly elected Howell to the position of associate justice of Rhode Island’s Superior (i.e., Supreme) Court. In this capacity, Howell was one of the five judges who heard the argument of James Mitchell Varnum urging the high court to declare unconstitutional the force act passed by the agrarian-controlled legislature to compel creditors and merchants to accept the state’s new issue of paper money or face fines and imprisonment. The court declined to enforce the law on a technicality, and the General Assembly deposed four of the five recalcitrant judges, including Howell, in the 1787 annual election. Howell nonetheless accepted Varnum’s theory regarding the power of judicial review and defiantly stated that his “personal view” was that the act, because it failed to provide trial by jury, “was indeed unconstitutional, had not the force of law, and could not be executed.” Amazingly, the resilient Howell secured election as attorney general in 1789, despite the continued dominance of the Country Party, but he was defeated for reelection in 1790.

In February 1789, just before becoming attorney general, Howell joined Moses Brown, Theodore Foster, John Dorrance, Thomas Arnold, and other civic leaders to form the Providence Abolition Society, which they formally incorporated in June 1790. Howell was chosen as the society’s president, and Moses Brown was its treasurer. In addition to its role as a moral force against slavery, this organization was authorized to bring court suits on behalf of slaves and to assist in prosecuting actions against illegal slave traders. The most famous of the latter was a suit brought against John Brown in 1796 for violating federal anti-slave trade laws. Brown’s acquittal weakened the society, as did the fact that, in the organization’s own words, slavery was “nearly extinct” in Rhode Island. By 1805, the society had become moribund despite the continuing efforts of Howell and Moses Brown. 

After his failed attempt in 1790 to win reelection as attorney general, Howell resumed his teaching duties at Brown with the title of professor of jurisprudence. Upon the death of his longtime colleague James Manning in July 1791, Howell became Brown’s interim president until the Reverend Jonathan Maxey filled the post in September 1792.

During the negotiation of the Jay Treaty with England in 1794, George Washington appointed Howell as a boundary commissioner. Howell’s primary task was determining the true course of the St. Croix River as the international boundary between Maine and New Brunswick.

During the 1790s, Howell divided his talents among law, teaching, and college administration, serving as secretary of the Brown Corporation from 1780 to 1806. As a practicing attorney, he earned a reputation as a skilled litigator. According to one source, he was a tall man with an imposing presence, “an excellent public speaker and possessed of a brilliant wit.” 

Howell gravitated toward the emerging Democratic-Republican Party, and in 1801, Jefferson appointed him U.S. attorney for the District of Rhode Island, a position he held for a year. Then, in 1812, Madison selected him as Rhode Island’s U.S. District Court judge. Howell served with distinction in this capacity until his death in July 1824 at the age of seventy-seven. During these years, he continued to serve Brown as a member of the school’s board of fellows.

Howell’s September 1770 marriage to Mary Brown—a daughter of Jeremiah Brown, pastor of the First Baptist Church—produced five children before she died in 1801. The oldest, Jeremiah (1771–1822), became Rhode Island’s U.S. senator in 1811 as a Democratic-Republican. He gained this post just before the Federalist Party took over the reins of state government, a change that came about because of the economic hardship caused in Rhode Island by the commercial restrictions enacted by the administrations of Jefferson and Madison to force England and France to respect America’s maritime rights. Jeremiah did not seek reelection when his term expired in 1817, and he died in 1822, predeceasing his father.

David Howell’s daughter, Waitstill, married Providence businessman and philanthropist Ebenezer Knight Dexter, and another daughter, Mary, became the wife of Rhode Island Chief Justice Samuel Eddy.

Howell’s celebrated brilliance was best described by his Brown colleague, Professor William Goddard:

“Judge Howell was endowed with extraordinary talents. As an able jurist, he established a solid reputation for himself. However, he was more distinguished as a keen wit and a scholar extensively acquainted with the ancient and several of the modern languages. As a pungent and effective public writer, he was almost unrivaled, and in conversation, whatever chanced to be the theme, whether politics or law, literature or theology, grammar or criticism, a Greek tragedy or a complex problem in mathematics, Judge Howell was never found wanting.”

David Howell was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2012.

For additional reading:

1. The Makers of Modern Rhode Island, by Patrick T. Conley, History Press, 2012.
2. David Howell at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
3. “David Howell (id: H000859)”. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
4. Manual – the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (1891), p. 208-13.
5. History of Franklin and Grand Isle Counties, Vermont. Syracuse, NY: D. Mason & Co. p. 223.
6. David Howell at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center.