State was in a fever.  The farmers' movement was a kind of political "New Deal",

but it was not permanently beneficial to those it proposed to help.  It was also

like unto the Federal Freedman's Bureau after the Confederate War, promising ex-

slaves "forty acres and a mule", etc.  It succeeded only in sweeping good men out

of office, much to the detriment of the state.  W. W. Ball, Editor of the News

and Courier, wrote an interesting book called "The State That Forgot".  Even Wade

Hampton, who had a little more than a decade prior redeemed the state, was swept

out of the U. S. Senate, and ruthlessly repudiated as an aristocrat.  Tillman proved

to be an able Senator when "he came to himself", and remained in office politically

invincible, until his death.

        I repeat that Maj. Howell, but for his family characteristic of refusing to

espouse a cause he did not believe in, might have joined the Tillman faction and

"gone places" politically.  However, he maintained his conscience and integrity,

and regained his popularity and political prestige with the people, being a mighty

power long after Tilimanism was forgotten.  He died in January, 1907, possessed

of the love of all Colletonians.

        Most of the Howells I have known were peculiarly prescient; my father

possessed this characteristic to a marked degree.  He could uncannily foresee the

reactions of men to given stimuli, and foretell public sentiment.  His ability to

read the innermost thoughts and aspirations of men, and the gift to express them

better than they could themselves, constituted the secret of his success as politician

and jury lawyer.  He told me once that his ability to see further into the future and

to prophesy events gave him a great advantage over most men, who possessed hind

sights only, without prescience.