George S. (George Sewall) Boutwell

Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1818 and raised partly on a family farm in Lunenburg, George Sewall Boutwell had little formal schooling after his teens. He taught school, worked as a clerk and merchant, studied law, and built a career that reflected both ambition and strong political convictions.

Boutwell became governor of Massachusetts in the early 1850s, then went on to serve as the first commissioner of Internal Revenue during the Civil War, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Secretary of the Treasury under Ulysses S. Grant, and later a U.S. senator from Massachusetts. He was a leading Radical Republican during Reconstruction and played an important role in the impeachment proceedings against President Andrew Johnson.

In his later years, Boutwell remained active in public debate and became a founding leader of the Anti-Imperialist League, arguing against U.S. expansion overseas after the Spanish-American War. He died in 1905, leaving behind a long public career that stretched from the age of Jacksonian politics into the opening years of the 20th century.