By Harold Holzer

It took not a village of historians but a lone descendant to rescue George S. Boutwell from the dustbin of American memory. Viewed by many in his own time as both radical and rigid, "hiding in plain sight" since the post-Civil War period, Boutwell has long deserved resurrection. He was -- cue the fast-approaching debate over tax cuts -- America's first IRS commissioner.

Now comes Jeffrey Boutwell -- a cousin several generations removed and the author of previous books on security issues -- to argue that George Boutwell ranks as "the most consequential public figure Americans have never heard of." This commendably balanced and well-researched biography demonstrates that his kinsman is indeed worth remembering.

Born in Brookline, Mass., in 1818, George Sewall Boutwell worked on the family farm, apprenticed with a village postmaster, studied law, advanced to the state legislature, was governor at age 33 and later served as both a congressman and a U.S. senator. In between stints on Capitol Hill, he undertook his greatest role: helping raise the vast sums of money needed to wage the Civil War -- a staggering million dollars a day by 1862.

To collect it, Boutwell recruited and managed the largest workforce in the government: a civilian army of some 4,000 clerks and agents. Although Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase earned the lion's share of recognition, Boutwell created the unprecedented revenue department. He became Treasury secretary himself during Ulysses S. Grant's first term; afterward, some believed Boutwell should have been more alert to the graft festering under the old general's nose, though the corruption came to light only after Boutwell had left the administration for the Senate. Boutwell never deserved Henry Adams's harsh judgment that he was a "somewhat lugubrious joke," though the book's claim that his name was once as well-known "as that of any other government figure in America, save the president," seems a stretch.

What certainly merits renewed attention are Boutwell's remarkably advanced positions on slavery, civil rights and an assortment of then-fringe positions that marked him not only as ahead of his time but as fully "woke" at a moment when most Americans were still unconscious.

Boutwell favored a shorter workweek, the secret ballot, penal reform, female education (though not suffrage), progressive taxation and Electoral College reform. Unlike some of his fellow New England abolitionists, he believed in racial equality. He fought longer than most to extend Reconstruction, hoping black citizenship would take hold in the former Confederacy. He advocated tirelessly for the constitutional amendments guaranteeing birthright citizenship and ballot access. And Boutwell led the failed effort to remove the racist Andrew Johnson from the White House.

It is hard to account for Boutwell's enlightened attitudes; he was hardly a born reformer. Modestly educated, Boutwell had his political awakening when he witnessed the horrors of slavery firsthand: Fugitives, seeking haven in Massachusetts, were hunted down and returned to bondage. In his nourishing private life, Boutwell was rewarded with a daughter who remained single and doted on her father; Jeffrey Boutwell ably mines her witty letters and journals to animate their intense bond.

Originally a Democrat even as the party began veering from its embrace of immigration to a greater tolerance for slavery, Boutwell won his second race for governor by forging a coalition with the antislavery Free Soilers. Assuring his constituents that he remained opposed to the "moral, political, social and industrial evil" of slavery, he also vowed to enforce existing laws -- the Fugitive Slave Act included. Abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier lamented, "May God forgive us for permitting his election!"

In the mid-1850s, Boutwell joined other antislavery Democrats in realigning with the nascent Republicans, rejuvenating his political career. After organizing the wartime revenue service, Boutwell won a House seat as a supporter of both the president and his then-controversial Emancipation Proclamation.

Boutwell proved an adroit (but not flamboyant) legislator, a competent (if uninspiring) orator and a thoroughly reliable ally. The White House sat across the lawn from the Treasury building; during his two tours there, Boutwell skillfully navigated the short distance to forge enduring friendships with both the loquacious Lincoln and the tight-lipped Grant.

As a policy wonk and good listener, Boutwell possessed qualities that cement relationships but not necessarily reputations, and when Jeffrey Boutwell focuses on his relative's legislative and bureaucratic work, the effect can be numbing. The biography soars only after Lincoln's death, when Boutwell spearheads the impeachment drive against Johnson, takes up black rights and late in life serves as president of the American Anti-Imperialist League, quixotically opposing U.S. annexation of the Philippines.

The author ventures some convincing explanations for Boutwell's posthumous obscurity, which has withstood even a mention in Joshua Cohen's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Netanyahus" (2021). When the "Profiles in Courage" view dominated in the mid-20th century -- suggesting that the Johnson impeachment was unhinged and unpatriotic -- Boutwell tumbled into historical purgatory. Boutwell's friendship with Grant did him little reputational good either, especially during the long period of disfavor that preceded the recent Grant renaissance. Even when the Radical Republicans enjoyed their own rehabilitation, firebrands like Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens obscured grayer men like Boutwell. As for Boutwell's fin de siècle anti-interventionism (easier to appreciate today), it put him at odds not only with Theodore Roosevelt's popular "Big Stick" muscularity but also with the robust globalism of the post-World War II era.

Yet Boutwell's erasure likely owes the most to his brittle Yankee personality. While some contemporaries acknowledged his honesty and work ethic, critics found him "cunning" and "too much of a scold." Such characteristics often earn grudging respect, but seldom affection. Jimmy Carter, who often rubbed people much the same way, would probably have loved George Boutwell.

--Mr. Holzer, the director of Hunter College's Roosevelt House, is the author, most recently, of "Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration."

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 10, 2025 14:17 ET (19:17 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.