According to author Jeffrey Boutwell (a distant collateral descendant), George Sewall Boutwell was an “important public figure hiding in plain sight.” His life was long (1818-1905), and filled with an equally long list of political and governmental accomplishments. According to his publicists, he was one of the most consequential 19th century Americans that nobody ever heard of.

George Boutwell was indeed a litany of Boy Scout virtues: truly good and decent, honest, diligent, hard-working, loyal, kind-hearted and unwavering in his concern for the downtrodden.

The long decades of George Boutwell’s maturity coincide with monumental changes in the country itself. Not only his lifelong passion for abolition and racial equality, but land growth, the Civil War, social turmoil, economic booms and busts, and the mechanics of government leadership. And money. 

Boutwell began his career early. Born and raised on a Massachusetts farm, he worked and clerked, read law (but did not formally engage in its practice for many years), and discovered politics at a very early age. He was a Democratic Massachusetts Governor when he was thirty, a Republican by forty, and seldom without political office, either appointed or elected, for the remainder of his life. He was among New England long-ago political heavyweights, like Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson and Ben Butler, now covered in history’s dust. 

He was pleasantly acquainted with newly elected President Abraham Lincoln, who offered him the position as Commissioner of Internal Revenue, which alone is reason to banish anyone to obscurity! Money administrators are coma-inducing. And George Boutwell was by and large, a diligent, bean-counting money-fellow.

He was also a staunch, sincere abolitionist and defender of the civil rights and economic well-being of former slaves. His passion for social justice was consistent. By the end of the Civil War and the turmoil of Reconstruction, Boutwell was an unwavering Radical Republican, having been elected to Congress during the Andrew Johnson administration. He held a leadership position second only to Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens. 

Boutwell was at the epicenter of managing the Johnson impeachment proceedings, even though he realized that the stated formal charges were flimsy, and the real cause was that the political differences between the implacable and vengeful Radicals and the bigoted and equally implacable Johnson were otherwise insurmountable. Impeachment failed by a single vote.

During the Johnson Administration, Boutwell became close to General Ulysses S. Grant, a man he admired enormously. It was President Grant who appointed the Massachusetts politician as his Secretary of the Treasury, another thankless position, given the non-stop money driven scandals and abuses that saturated Grant’s two terms. Interestingly enough, neither Grant nor Boutwell were ever personally dishonest. But Grant was loyal to a fault – to his friends. And so was Boutwell. He was a pall bearer when the Great General died a decade after he left office.  

Later in his long career of public service, elected to various positions of importance, Boutwell favored civil service reforms, opposed imperialism, and would qualify as a bona fide liberal “something-or-other” today. His views were generally independent and balanced, and always for the benefit of the people in general, and those who needed it most, specifically. And invariably, his positions were usually sensible, fair and with judgement.

Which, of course, prompts the question… “Why has nobody ever heard of him?” 

It has become very popular for historians (related or not) to resurrect long-ago secondary or supporting players, and whip them into a frenzy of importance. And importance, given time, ebbs and flows. And, in the absence of serious personal accomplishments-with-legs, so to speak, biographers turn to life-and-times scenarios to present their subject as a part of the whole. This is fair – and a good thing. Backup singers are important too.

For a man of George Boutwell’s long life in public service, his paper trail was full of paper but thin, and more resume than diary. It reflects precious little of the man himself. This is no fault of Jeff Boutwell’s excellent biography. The author is careful, and obviously well trained to report the life and time facts diligently researched and documented. That part is substantive and welcome. Alas George himself only provides activities: elections, campaigns, votes, political issues – not the stuff of “life.” There is no animation. We have no inkling whether or not his marriage was happy or rancorous. It is barely mentioned. His daughter provides some nice-but-predictable observations on the times they lived in. There is little mention of “hard times overcome,” or challenges that elevated his soul. There are no records of serious rivalries or enmities. His political “confrontations” were barely scuffles. But then again, the age he lived in, for all its divisiveness and rancor, was generally polite. And of course, a person’s privacy was guarded – and respected.

For all his accomplishments, the je ne sais quois we call charisma is lacking. Ol’ George could not wave his hat in the air and raise an army in his wake like an Andrew Jackson. Nor could he rouse a crowd with stirring phrases like a Lincoln or Winston Churchill. Even Boutwell’s friends (and he had many!) considered him a little boring.

But not everyone can be John Wayne. Supporting players are important. They even win well-deserved awards.

Kudos to author Boutwell for his a great service as a writer, family-member and historian in examining a long-ago supporting actor: a man well regarded by his peers, and who served his fellow-man and country honestly, capably and unstintingly. And for a long time. Balanced and with good judgment. An endangered species, in an age when the best of us refrain from coming forward.

In today’s fractious litany of woes, as the song goes (ish)… “Mister we could use a man like George S. Boutwell again.”

Boutwell, Jeffrey, George S. Boutwell: Radical Republican and Champion of Democracy – W.W. Norton, 2025

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1324074264

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1324074267