Mon, Feb 24 | 7 – 8:30 pm
HCLS Miller Branch
For adults. Register here.

Jeffrey Boutwell discusses his new book, Boutwell: Radical Republican and Champion of Democracy, a biography of family member George S. Boutwell – perhaps the most consequential American political figure you’ve never heard of. During his career from 1839 to 1905, George Boutwell was Governor of Massachusetts, served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, was treasury secretary for Ulysses Grant and Commissioner of Revenue for Abraham Lincoln, helped create the Republican Party in the 1850s, and forty years later opposed Republican Presidents William McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt over their plans to annex the Philippines following the Spanish-American War.

Boutwell was instrumental in framing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, initiating the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, and investigating white vigilante violence against Black people in Mississippi in the 1870s. For seven decades, George Boutwell sought to “redeem America’s promise” through racial equality, economic equity, and the humane use of American power abroad.

Jeffrey Boutwell is a writer and historian living in Columbia, Maryland, after a 40-year career in journalism, government, and international scientific policy. He began his career as a reporter and editor with the famed City News Bureau of Chicago and was a book reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times. After two years in the Windy City, Boutwell moved to Berlin and then to England, where he received an M.Sc. in Economics and Politics from the London School of Economics. He received a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984. He has written and spoken widely on issues ranging from nuclear weapons arms control to Middle East peace to environmental issues.