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Rufus K. Howell

American judge

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 19, 2024
Entity authorityQ104583539
Source-derived summary

Rufus King Howell (c. 1820 – August 12, 1886) was an American judge and lawyer. He served as justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court from April 3, 1865, to January 9, 1877.

Career

In August 1863 after the emancipation proclamation was signed, President Abraham Lincoln ordered Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks to oversee the creation of a new Louisiana state constitution, and in December he granted Banks wide-ranging authority to create a new civilian government. An emancipation convention with delegates was formed by Banks in order navigate the intricate social and economic problems in Louisiana's Reconstruction era. Edward Henry Durell was the president of Bank's convention, and Rufus K. Howell served as a delegate and chairman alongside Maximilian F. Bonzano and Christian Roselius.

Louisiana Supreme Court

In 1865, Howell was appointed by Governor James Madison Wells to the newly constituted post-American Civil War court. Although he formally held his seat until January 1877, he did not participate in the last sitting of the court held in that month. The court was thereafter completely replaced by the new Democratic administration which took over the state government at that time.

Editorial summary

“Rufus K. Howell” enters the record as american judge. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Rufus, Howell and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1820, 1886, 1865, 1877—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1820-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Rufus, Howell and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Rufus K. Howell” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Rufus, Howell and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 19, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q104583539. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1820, 1886, 1865 and 1877.

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A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Rufus K. Howell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.