McCulloch, Hugh

Life Span
to
    Full name
    Hugh McCulloch
    Place of Birth
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Free State
    No. of Spouses
    1
    No. of Children
    4
    Family
    Hugh McCulloch (father), Abigail Perkins (mother), Susan Man (wife, 1838)
    Education
    Other
    Other Education
    Bowdoin College, ME
    Occupation
    Politician
    Attorney or Judge
    Businessman
    Educator
    Relation to Slavery
    White non-slaveholder
    Political Parties
    Whig
    Republican
    Government
    Lincoln Administration (1861-65)
    Johnson Administration (1865-69)

    Hugh McCulloch (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    Coming from a Federalist-National Republican political lineage, McCulloch described himself as "an original Henry Clay Whig" who supported all elements of Clay's American System, although he had misgivings about the high protective tariff, which he saw as detrimental to the country's commercial interests. When the Whig party disintegrated in the mid-1850s, McCulloch joined the new Republican party and was quietly antislavery, though like many conservative former Whigs he lamented the spiraling sectional controversy that divided the nation. Still, he saw the differences between North and South as irreconcilable and believed that only war could curb the aggressive and expansionist slave power.

    As the war began, McCulloch continued to head the Indiana banking system and in 1862 he lobbied against creating a national banking system, which he saw as "greatly prejudicial to the State banks." The following year, however, Congress passed an amended version of the bill, which satisfied McCulloch's objections, and he accepted an invitation from Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase to become comptroller of the currency for the new system and moved to Washington to organize the National Currency Bureau. Working with Chase and then William Pitt Fessenden when Chase resigned in 1864, McCulloch was instrumental in getting the banking network off to a solid start. When Fessenden resigned in March 1865, McCulloch agreed to Abraham Lincoln's offer of the Treasury portfolio, and he continued under Andrew Johnson's administration.
    Terry L. Seip, "McCulloch, Hugh," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/04/04-00682.html.
    How to Cite This Page: "McCulloch, Hugh," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/6216.