BEING HELD OFF-SITE AT THE GROTON INN, PRESCOTT ROOM

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. During the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, he was a close ally of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant in fighting for Black freedom and equality for all citizens. In the 1890s, he led the anti-imperialist opposition to America’s annexation of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War. A primary author of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, Boutwell initiated the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson and helped establish the modern American economy as Treasury Secretary to President Grant. Boutwell lived with his family in Groton, Mass. for seventy years, dying in 1905. 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 the Author: 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.