George Sewell Boutwell Signature
This is the signature of George Sewell Boutwell (1818-1905) George was an antislavery Democrat in the Massachusetts state legislature where he gained popularity with the Free Soil Party and much of the liberal Massachusetts public enabling him to win the governorship in 1851. His part in the Civil War was played out in the halls of the Federal bureaucracy and Congress.
Embracing the young Republican Party, Boutwell won appointment as the first Commissioner of Internal Revenue in 1862.
He was one of the more practical men among the radical Republicans then beginning to influence national government and, along with Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, knew radical war aims would never be fully realized without adequate financing.
His success in upholding this position won him recognition and election to Congress in 1863. In the House of Representatives he worked with the radical wing of his party for war and reconstruction legislation that was punitive to former slave states slowly being brought back under Federal control. At the end of the war, a member of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, he opposed Pres. Andrew Johnson over postwar policy toward the South.
Boutwell's long postbellum career was memorable for his part in Johnson's impeachment hearings (where he was one of seven managers of the prosecution's case; his tenure as Pres. Ulysses S. Grant's secretary of the treasury; his term as senator from Massachusetts, 1873-77; and his revision and codification of U.S. statutes.
This is the signature of George Sewell Boutwell (1818-1905) George was an antislavery Democrat in the Massachusetts state legislature where he gained popularity with the Free Soil Party and much of the liberal Massachusetts public enabling him to win the governorship in 1851. His part in the Civil War was played out in the halls of the Federal bureaucracy and Congress.
Embracing the young Republican Party, Boutwell won appointment as the first Commissioner of Internal Revenue in 1862.
He was one of the more practical men among the radical Republicans then beginning to influence national government and, along with Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, knew radical war aims would never be fully realized without adequate financing.
His success in upholding this position won him recognition and election to Congress in 1863. In the House of Representatives he worked with the radical wing of his party for war and reconstruction legislation that was punitive to former slave states slowly being brought back under Federal control. At the end of the war, a member of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, he opposed Pres. Andrew Johnson over postwar policy toward the South.
Boutwell's long postbellum career was memorable for his part in Johnson's impeachment hearings (where he was one of seven managers of the prosecution's case; his tenure as Pres. Ulysses S. Grant's secretary of the treasury; his term as senator from Massachusetts, 1873-77; and his revision and codification of U.S. statutes.