Author Boutwell George S.

Harvard University Board of Overseers from 1850 to 1860 and was elected twice Governor of Massachusetts in 1851 and 1852 [1], serving from 1851 to 1853. He was a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1853, helped in founding the Republican Party in 1854 and was secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education from 1855 to 1861. Boutwell attended the Peace Conference of 1861 in Washington, D.C. which attempted to devise means to prevent the impending American Civil War. He switched party affiliations to the Republican Party and served on the military commission in the Department of War in 1862 before being appointed the first Commissioner of Internal Revenue by President Abraham Lincoln the same year. He served as commissioner until his election to the United States House of Representatives where he served from 1863 to 1869. In 1868, as a congressman, he served as one of the special prosecutors in the impeachment trials of President Andrew Johnson. Boutwell resigned from the House in 1869 to accept the appointment of Secretary of the Treasury from President Ulysses S. Grant in 1869. As Treasury Secretary, his primary achievements were reorganizing the Treasury Department, improving bookkeeping by customs houses, incorporating the United States Mint into the Treasury and reducing the national debt. He also managed the Black Friday crisis of September 23, 1869, warding off gold speculators by flooding the market with Treasury gold. In 1873, when Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson was elected to the vice presidency, Boutwell was elected to Wilson's Senate seat and resigned as Treasury Secretary. In the Senate, he served as chairman of the Committee on the Revision of the Laws in the 44th Congress. After leaving the Senate, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed him commissioner to codify and edit the Revised Statutes of the United States in 1877 and was the United States counsel before the French and American Claims Commission in 1880. Boutwell practiced international and patent law in Boston and Washington, D.C. and turned down the appointment of Secretary of the Treasury from President Chester A. Arthur in 1884. He opposed the acquisition by the United States of the Philippines, became president of the American Anti-Imperialist League, and was a presidential elector on the William Jennings Bryan ticket in 1900. He published several books on education, taxation and political economy. His book The Constitution of the United States at the End of the First Century was considered particularly significant. Boutwell died in Groton, Massachusetts, and is buried at Groton Cemetery. His house in the center of Groton, built in 1851 while he was governor, was given to the Groton Historical Society by his daughter, Georgianna. It now serves as the society's headquarters and is opened in the summer as a museum.