Robert Howe, born in Brunswick County, North Carolina, in 1732, was
of English descent. He married young, took his wife to England, and
lived for two years with some relatives. Returning to this country, he
was appointed in 1766 commander at Fort Johnson in North Carolina. At
the beginning of the Revolution, he was a member of the Committee of
Safety for his native county, and with General Woodford was in command
of Norfolk when that place was attacked and destroyed by Lord Dunmore,
on the 1st of January, 1776. Prosecuting the war with vigor, Howe drove
Dunmore out of Virginia. The Assemblies of North Carolina and Virginia
recognized his services by a vote of thanks; Congress appointed him
brigadier-general in the Continental army on the 1st of March, 1776;
and on the 5th of May following, General Clinton excepted him when
offering pardon in the king’s name to all Carolinians who would lay
down their arms and return to their allegiance. The next year he was
ordered to join the Southern army; and on the 20th of October, 1777,
he was raised to the rank of major-general, and intrusted with an
expedition against St. Augustine. After some successes, the destruction
of one fourth of his army by an epidemic compelled him to abandon
this project, and he was afterward assigned to duty in Georgia. Being
defeated here, he joined Washington on the Hudson, and remained in
active service at the North until the close of the war. In 1785, he
was appointed a commissioner to treat with the Western Indians, and
upon returning to his native State, was received with public honors and
shortly after elected to the Legislature. Before the time arrived for
him to take his seat, he died of fever on the 12th of November, 1785.
ALEXANDER McDOUGAL.
Alexander McDougal, born on the island of Islay, Scotland, in 1731,
was brought to New York while still a child, by his father. At first
Alexander followed the sea, took part in the French and Indian War as
commander of two privateers,--the “Barrington” and the “Tiger,”--and
then settling in New York City, became one of her successful merchants.
Keenly alive to the aggressive steps taken by the home Government in
her dealings with her American dependencies, he drew upon himself
censure and imprisonment in 1769, by writing an address entitled, “A
Son of Liberty to the Betrayed Inhabitants of the Colony,” in which
he rebuked the Assembly for entering upon the favorable consideration
of a bill of supplies for troops quartered in the city to overawe the
inhabitants, and for rejecting a proposition authorizing the vote by
ballot. An incarceration of twenty-three weeks in what is now the
registrar’s office, made him the first martyr in the American struggle
for independence. When set at liberty, he entered into correspondence
with the master-spirits all over the country, presided over the
celebrated “meeting in the fields” in 1774, was appointed colonel of
the first Revolutionary regiment raised in New York, and was created
brigadier-general in the Continental army on the 9th of August,
1776, and immediately went into active service. After the battle of
Germantown and upon the recommendation of Washington, he was promoted
to be major-general on the 20th of October, 1777. From the beginning of
1778 to the close of 1780, he was in command at various posts along the
Hudson, but was summoned in the latter year to represent New York in
Congress, and in 1781 was appointed minister of marine. In 1783, when
the army went into winter-quarters at Newburg, he was chosen as head of
the committee sent to Congress to represent their grievances. At the
close of the war he was elected to the Senate of New York, and filled
that position until his death on the 8th of June, 1786.