Boutwell: Radical Republican and Champion of Democracy

Join us on Wednesday, September 24 at 6 p.m. to meet author Jeffrey Boutwell and learn about George S. Boutwell.

George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts, the Commonwealth’s youngest-ever governor in the 1850s, was a key figure in American public life for seven decades. Having helped create the Republican Party in the 1850s, he became a close ally and friend of presidents Lincoln and Grant during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. While in Congress, he helped write the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution and led the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson for seeking to re-establish white supremacist political control in the South. As Revenue Commissioner for Lincoln and Treasury Secretary for Grant, Boutwell helped establish the modern American economy. In the 1870s, Boutwell served in the U.S. Senate where he chaired the committee investigating the Mississippi Plan of 1875 that employed intimidation and violence to re-establish white Democratic control of the state. Remarkably, at the age of 80, Boutwell was asked to become president of the Anti-Imperialist League, working with Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, and others to oppose Teddy Roosevelt and America’s annexation of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War. George Boutwell died in 1905, having lived with his family in Groton, Mass. for more than fifty years. This first major biography by family member Jeffrey Boutwell is as much a history of 19th century America as it is a critique of the failures of governance during a turbulent and formative period in American history.

About Jeffrey

Jeffrey Boutwell is a writer, historian, and public policy specialist whose forty-year career spanned journalism, government, and international scientific research and cooperation. He has written widely on issues relating to nuclear weapons arms control, European politics, Middle East security issues, and environmental degradation and civil conflict. He has a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a B.A. in history from Yale University, and he worked for many years at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Mass. Jeffrey grew up in Winchester and Concord, Mass., and now lives with his wife, Buthaina Shukri, in Columbia, Maryland. He and George Boutwell share a common ancestor, the indentured servant James Boutwell, who emigrated from England to Salem, Mass. in 1632.

Visit www.jeffreyboutwell.com to learn more.

Books will be available for purchase courtesy of The Next Chapter Books and More.

This program is made possible by the generous sponsorship of the Friends of the Thomas Crane Public Library.

Host or Publisher Thomas Crane Public Library