Howell Cobb

Howell Cobb (born Sept. 7, 1815, Jefferson County, Ga., U.S.—died Oct. 9, 1868, New York City) was a Georgia politician who championed Southern unionism during the 1850s but then advocated immediate secession following the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Cobb was born into the antebellum plantation elite and grew up in Athens, Ga. He was graduated from the University of Georgia in 1834, studied law for two years, and in 1836 was admitted to the bar. The following year (1837), Cobb was elected solicitor general of a strongly pro-Union district in northeastern Georgia. Cobb held the office of solicitor for three years; in 1842 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from essentially the same district.

Cobb served in Congress from 1842 to 1851 and again from 1855 to 1857; he supported the annexation of Texas, the war with Mexico, and the extension of slavery into the territories. But he broke with the most extreme proslavery Southerners when he advocated extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, opposed the creation of a sectional political party, and supported the Compromise of 1850.

In 1851 Cobb ran for governor of Georgia on the ticket of the newly formed Constitutional Union Party and won a solid victory over a pro-secession candidate. But in so doing, he severed all ties with pro-secessionist Democrats, became politically isolated, and was overwhelmingly defeated in 1854, when he ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

His pro-Union district returned Cobb to Congress in 1855, and the following year he played a major role in the nomination and election of James Buchanan as president. Buchanan made Cobb secretary of the treasury, a position Cobb held until Lincoln was elected president in 1860.

Immediately following Lincoln’s election, Cobb resigned his Cabinet post, returned to Georgia, and became an ardent spokesman for secession. He served as chairman of the Montgomery, Ala., convention called to organize the Confederacy, then organized his own regiment and led it to the front. He eventually rose to the rank of major general and commanded the District of Georgia until forced to surrender at the end of the war.

A bitter opponent of Reconstruction, Cobb in his last years practiced law in Macon, Ga.