Hiding in plain sight

During his seven-decade career in public life, George Sewall Boutwell sought to “redeem America’s promise” of racial equality, economic equity, and the principled use of American power abroad. From 1840 to 1905, Boutwell was at the center of efforts to abolish slavery, establish the Republican Party, assist President Lincoln in funding the Union war effort, facilitate Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, impeach President Andrew Johnson, and enact the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. He helped lay the foundations of the modern American economy with President Grant, investigated white terrorism in the 1870s, and opposed American imperialism following the Spanish-American War alongside Mark Twain and Booker T. Washington.

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"George Boutwell, one of the central political characters of his age, whose story charts the whole arc of the party of Lincoln, is at last brought vividly and brilliantly back to life―with vital lessons for our time about what it takes to defend democracy." ―Sidney Blumenthal

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