During the American Civil War, he and fellow reporter Francis A. Mallison were responsible in creating a forgery falsely declaring another conscription order in New York City by President Abraham Lincoln.

Shortly after returning from a pleasure trip in California in February 1860, he visited Lynn, Massachusetts to witness a shoemakers strike "to see the fun".

That night, he sent a report on the strike to The Times which so impressed the editors that Henry J. Raymond personally telegraphed Howard to offer him a full-time position on the paper.

[2] His reports provided detailed descriptions of the reception given to the Prince and his royal escort as they visited several major cities, all of these letters signed "Howard".

[1][3] He extensively covered the United States presidential election of 1860[2] and, the following year, he wrote a false story claiming that Abraham Lincoln had traveled through Baltimore disguised in "a Scotch cap and long military cloak" while on his way to Washington, D.C. for his official inauguration [4] Upon the outbreak of the American Civil War, became a war correspondent and was present at the battles of Bull Run and Ball's Bluff.

He also played a series of practical jokes such as holding open the paper's lines to telegraph the genealogy of Jesus and, in September 1862, he violated an order prohibiting journalists from attending the funeral of Brigadier General Philip Kearny by sneaking in dressed in clerical robes.

[1][3] On May 18, 1864, a government proclamation was published in the New York World and the Journal of Commerce which claimed that President Abraham Lincoln had ordered the conscription of an additional 400,000 men into the Union Army due to "the situation in Virginia, the disaster at Red River, the delay at Charleston, and the general state of the country".

The editors, concerned of a likely confrontation with the mob, insisted the proclamation was real and showed a dispatch from Associated Press which they had received earlier that morning.

[4] Two days after the story was published, detectives arrested Brooklyn Eagle reporter Francis A. Mallison who quickly confessed to his involvement in the hoax and implicated his editor as having organized the deception.

He invested heavily in gold and, when he and Mallison used various couriers to plant the false information in the press the following morning, it was a simple matter for him to sell his shares once the price had risen enough for him to make a huge profit.

[4] Howard was held as a prisoner of war at Fort Lafayette for fourteen weeks, serving less than three months of his sentence, before being pardoned by Lincoln on August 22, 1864.

He also compiled a large collection of letters and telegrams sent by various influential members of the Republican Party to Stephen W. Dorsey and provided digests for the memoirs of Grant and Beecher in his column, which were reprinted throughout the world, and regularly corresponded with the Boston Globe, the Chicago News and the United Press.