George Sewel Boutwell

Governor, Massachusetts, 1851-1852
U. S. House of Representatives, Massachusetts, 1863-1869
U. S. Secretary of the Treasury, 1869-1873
U. S. Senate, Massachusetts, 1873-1877

Born: January 28, 1818, Brookline, Massachusetts.

• Attended the public schools.
  
• Taught school in Shirley, Massachusetts.
  
• Engaged in mercantile pursuits in Groton, Massachusetts, 1841.
  
• Appointed Postmaster of Groton, Massachusetts, 1841.
  
• Studied law, was admitted to the bar, but did not enter into active practice for many years.
  
• Member of the Massachusetts State House of Representatives, 1842-1844 and 1847-1850.
  
• Unsuccessful Democratic candidate from Massachusetts for election to the Twenty-ninth, Thirtieth, and Thirty-first U. S. Congresses.
  
• Unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Governor of Massachusetts, 1849 and 1850.
  
• Massachusetts State Bank Commissioner, 1849-1851.
  
• Member of the Board of Overseers, Harvard University, 1850-1860.
  
• Governor of Massachusetts, 1851-1852.
  
• Member of the Massachusetts State Constitutional Convention, 1853.
  
• Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, October 1855 - January 1861.
  
• Member of the Peace Convention of 1861 held in Washington, D. C., in an effort to devise means to prevent the impending war.
  
• Served on the Military Commission under the U. S. War Department, 1862.
  
• First U. S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 1862-1863.
  
• Elected from Massachusetts as a Republican to the Thirty-eighth and to the three succeeding U. S. Congresses, serving from March 4, 1863 - March 12, 1869, when he resigned.
  
• One of the managers appointed by the U. S. House of Representatives, 1868, to conduct the impeachment proceedings against Andrew Johnson, President of the United States.
  
• Appointed U. S. Secretary of the Treasury by President Grant, serving from March 12, 1869 - March 17, 1873, when he resigned.
  
• Elected from Massachusetts to the U. S. Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Henry Wilson, serving from March 17, 1873 - March 3, 1877.
  
• Appointed by U. S. President Hayes as Commissioner to codify and edit the Statutes at Large, March 1877.
  
• U. S. Counsel before the French and American Claims Commission, 1880.
  
• Declined appointment as U. S. Secretary of the Treasury, 1884.
  
• Practiced law in Washington, D. C..
  
• U. S. Counsel for Haiti, 1885, for Hawaii, 1886, and for Chile, 1893-1894.
  
• President of the Anti-Imperialist League, 1898-1905.

Died: February 27, 1905, Groton, Middlesex County, Massachusetts.
Buried: Groton Cemetery, Groton, Massachusetts.

(Source: U.S. Congress. House. Biographical Directory Of The American Congress 1774-1949, 85th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Doc. 607 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950), pp. 759-2057.)