1835. His action in this capacity was highly beneficial, the appropriation to the public schools of half the surplus revenue paid over by the United States Government being principally due to him. In 1843 and afterwards he was elected for three successive terms to the House of Representatives. As a democrat he acted with his party, and vigorously supported in a published speech the annexation of Texas, though a measure mainly urged by the slave power with the object of obtaining more votes in congress. A speech on the Oregon Question also attracted much attention. He was more characteristically employed in promoting the organisation of the Smithsonian Institution, and was appointed chairman of the committee on the subject. He afterwards became one of the regents. In 1850 and 1851 he took an active part in the revision of the constitution of Indiana, and passed a bill securing widows and married women independent rights of property, on which account he received a testimonial from the women of the state. This legislation contributed to the reprehensible laxity of Indiana legislation on divorce, on which subject Owen had a lively epistolary controversy, published in pamphlet form, with Horace Greeley. In 1850 he published a useful and practical treatise on the construction of plank roads, a subject of great importance in America. From 1853 to 1858 he was United States minister at Naples. During the civil war he was active as a pamphleteer on the union side, especially as the author of 'The Policy of Emancipation,' three letters addressed respectively to President Lincoln and two of his ministers, advocating the immediate emancipation of the slaves. The letter to the president was placed in his hands three days before the issue of his famous emancipation proclamation (1 Jan. 1863), and is affirmed by Secretary Chase to have had considerable weight with him; but it is known on Lincoln's own authority that he had decided upon the issue of his proclamation on receiving the news of M'Clellan's victory at Antietam Creek. Owen's letter is, nevertheless, a very cogent piece of reasoning. In 1863 he was chairman of a committee appointed by Secretary Stanton to examine into the condition of the emancipated freedmen, and embodied his observations and deductions in a work entitled 'The Wrong of Slavery, the Right of Emancipation, and the Future of the African Race in the United States' (1864). He had already, like his Neither, exchanged his early materialism for a spiritualism embracing belief in almost all descriptions of alleged supernatural phenomena, and had published in 1859 the book by which he is probably most widely known, 'Footfalls on the Boundary of another World'. It is full of striking stories, well told. 'Debatable Land between this World and the next,' a work of similar character, followed in 1872. In 1874 he published 'Threading my Way,' an autobiography of the first twenty-seven years of his life. It is full of interest, and it is to be regretted that he did not carry out his intention of completing it. In his latter days he was for a time deluded by the notorious 'medium,' Katie King, and suffered from an attack of insanity, from which, however, he soon recovered. He died at his summer residence on Lake George on 17 June 1877. His character and his standing as a public man are well conveyed in the obituary notice in the New York 'Nation': 'Mr. Owen was a gentleman in the best sense of the word, and his early education in Switzerland and lifelong scholarly habits, joined to native moderation of character, secured for him a sphere of usefulness and a degree of public esteem which his more radical and less dispassionate associates failed to attain.'
Owen's daughter Rosamond was second wife of Laurence Oliphant [q. v.]
[Owen's Threading my Way, 1874; Appleton's Dictionary of American Biography; New York Nation, 6 July 1877.]
OWEN, Sir ROGER (1573–1617). [See under Owen, Thomas, d. 1598.]
OWEN, SAMUEL (1769?–1857), watercolour painter, was born about 1769. Nothing is recorded of him before 1791, when he exhibited 'A Sea View' at the Royal Academy. This was followed in 1797, after the victory of Cape St. Vincent, by 'A View of the British and Spanish Fleets,' and in 1799 by three drawings of the engagement between the Director (Captain Bligh) and the Vryheid (Admiral De Winter) in the action off Camperdown on 11 Oct. 1797. These, with three other drawings exhibited in 1802 and 1807, complete the number of his exhibits at the Royal Academy. In 1808 he joined the Associated Artists in Water-Colours, and senteleven drawings of shipping and marine subjects to the first exhibition of that short-lived body. He exhibited also twelve works in 1809, and six in 1810, but after that date he resigned his membership. His works are carefully drawn and freshly coloured, and possess much merit. Among them are the series of eighty-four drawings which were engraved by William Bernard Cooke for his work 'The Thames,' published in 1811, and
