1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [60]
Horney, Karen (1885–1952) Born in Germany, Horney became a physician and an apostle of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. She practiced psychiatry in Germany until 1932, when she came to Chicago as director of the Institute for Psychoanalysis. She later practiced in New York City. Horney made a radical departure from Freud by arguing, in The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937), that environmental and social conditions—instinctual drives—were principal shapers of personality and causes of neurosis. It was a revolutionary philosophical, sociological, and psychological theory.
Houston, Sam (1793–1863) A Virginian by birth, Houston was sent to Texas in 1832 as President Andrew Jackson’s emissary in negotiating Indian treaties there. He decided to settle in Texas in 1833 and became a leader of the rebellion against Mexico—which governed Texas—beginning in November 1835. Houston commanded the small Texas army, which, despite early reverses, triumphed at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836 and won independence. Houston served as president of the Republic of Texas from 1836 to 1838 and from 1841 to 1844, then as one of the first two senators, after Texas was admitted to the Union in 1846. As a majority of Texans voted for secession on the eve of Civil War, Houston lost his bid for reelection to the Senate in 1858, but was elected governor in 1859. His efforts to prevent secession failed and, in 1861, he refused to swear allegiance to the Confederacy, whereupon he was deposed and lived out the rest of his life in quiet retirement.
Howard, O. O. (1830–1909) Oliver O. Howard served with distinction during the Civil War, losing his right arm at the Battle of Fair Oaks. Despite his disability, he returned to the war. During Reconstruction, Howard, who was deeply concerned about the fate of some four million freed slaves, was named to head the Freedman’s Bureau, the federal agency charged with ensuring the former slaves’ welfare and integration into society. Howard’s chief accomplishment was the establishment of schools and vocational training institutes under the auspices of the bureau. He was also a founder in 1867 of what became the nation’s premier institution of higher education for African Americans, Howard University, which was named in his honor. Howard served as the university’s third president from 1869 to 1874, when he returned to military service as a general officer in the Indian Wars of the West.
Howe, Julia Ward (1819–1910) A poet and, with her husband, publisher of the abolitionist newspaper Commonwealth, Howe composed the stirring “Battle Hymn of the Republic” during an 1861 visit to a military encampment near Washington, D.C. It was published in the February 1862 issue of Atlantic Monthly and, set to the tune of “John Brown’s Body,” became the quasi-official anthem of the Union Army for the rest of the Civil War.
Howells, William Dean (1837–1920) The novels of Howells are realistic chronicles of American life as it shifted from the simplicity of the early 19th century to the complexity of the turn of that century. His best work, the 1882 A Modern Instance, depicts the inexorable disintegration of a modern marriage, while his most popular work, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), is the story of a simple businessman’s struggle to rise within Boston society. Howells was an important influence on and mentor to many of his younger contemporaries, and he was an intimate literary adviser to Mark Twain.
Hubble, Edwin (1889–1953) Hubble was the founder of extragalactic astronomy, whose observations showed that the universe was populated with many galaxies, of which our Milky Way was just one. Hubble also showed that the universe was not only expanding, but doing so at an accelerating rate. His observations and conclusions advanced astronomy in the most profound and elemental ways, and his scientific achievement must be seen as on a par with those of Copernicus and Galileo.
Hudson, Henry (circa 1565–1611) A British sailor, Hudson made three voyages for England (1607,