Boutwell, George Sewall

Life Span
to
    Full name
    George Sewall Boutwell
    Place of Birth
    Burial Place
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Free State
    Occupation
    Politician
    Attorney or Judge
    Businessman
    Educator
    Relation to Slavery
    White non-slaveholder
    Political Parties
    Democratic
    Republican
    Government
    Lincoln Administration (1861-65)
    Grant Administration (1869-77)
    Hayes Administration (1877-81)
    US Senate
    US House of Representatives
    Governor
    State legislature
    Other state government

    George Sewel Boutwell (Congressional Biographical Directory)

    Reference
    BOUTWELL, George Sewel, a Representative and a Senator from Massachusetts; born in Brookline, Mass., January 28, 1818; attended the public schools; taught school in Shirley, Mass.; engaged in mercantile pursuits in Groton, Mass., 1841; appointed postmaster of Groton 1841; studied law; member, State house of representatives 1842-1844, 1847-1850; unsuccessful Democratic candidate for election to both Congress and the governorship on several occasions between 1844 and 1850; State bank commissioner 1849-1851; Governor of Massachusetts 1851-1852; member of the State constitutional convention in 1853; secretary of the State board of education 1855-1861; member of the board of overseers of Harvard University 1850-1860; member of the peace convention of 1861 held in Washington, D.C., in an effort to devise means to prevent the impending war; served on the military commission under the War Department in 1862; first Commissioner of Internal Revenue in 1862 and 1863; elected as a Republican to the Thirty-eighth and to the three succeeding Congresses and served from March 4, 1863, to March 12, 1869, when he resigned; one of the managers appointed by the House of Representatives in 1868 to conduct the impeachment proceedings against President Andrew Johnson; appointed Secretary of the Treasury by President Ulysses Grant 1869-1873, when he resigned; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Henry Wilson and served from March 17, 1873, until March 3, 1877; chairman, Committee on the Revision of the Laws of the United States (Forty-fourth Congress); appointed by President Rutherford Hayes as commissioner to codify and edit the Statutes at Large in 1877; United States counsel before the French and American Claims Commission 1880; declined appointment as Secretary of the Treasury in 1884; practiced law in Washington, D.C.; counsel for Haiti in 1885, for Hawaii in 1886, and for Chile in 1893 and 1894; president of the Anti-Imperialist League 1898-1905; died in Groton, Middlesex County, Mass., February 27, 1905; interment in Groton Cemetery.
    "Boutwell, George Sewel," Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774 to Present, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=B000674.
    How to Cite This Page: "Boutwell, George Sewall," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/21573.