Born on September 7, 1815, the eldest son of wealthy Georgian planter John Addison Cobb and his Virginian wife Sarah Robinson Rootes, whose long-distance love affair and courtship dissolved into marriage in 1813, Howell Cobb is described by biographers as personally cheerful, gregarious, and a talented jester addicted to talking. No question that he did look rather like Falstaff at most stages of his life.
A politician whenever possible and a lawyer when not, he served at various times as governor of Georgia, speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and secretary of the Treasury. His ambition had been to run for the presidency itself in 1860, but he resigned that year instead, following —a bit belatedly— his native state into secession. He then, along with his brother Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb, organized the legendary Cobb's Legion of Georgia that was to serve honorably and actively in, yes, the War of Nawthun Aggreshun.
Of note during the Treasury period, itself an irony given Cobb's personal profligacy, Cobb —like his predecessor James Guthrie— believed that the accumulating surplus in the treasury vaults was causing stringency in the money market. To relieve this, he introduced surplus funds into circulation by buying back government bonds from commercial banks, which had purchased them as investments. When a panic hit later on, the Treasury was in the embarrassing situation of having empty coffers, and it had to rely for the first time on commercial banks to buy federal bonds and relieve the crisis. It was not until Cobb's last year in office that Congress passed a bill to raise revenue through higher tariffs.
Cobb died during a visit to New York on October 9, 1868.
more to follow July 21, 2003
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