March 28th, 2025 5:00pm–7:00pm

Join Jeffrey Boutwell, author of BOUTWELL: Radical Republican and Champion of Democracy, and Casey Seiler, Editor in Chief and Vice President at Times Union, for a lively conversation on George S. Boutwell, a significant yet previously unknown public figure who worked closely with presidents Lincoln and Grant in promoting Black emancipation and suffrage, led the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, and later became president of the Anti-Imperialist League working with Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, Jane Addams, William James, and others to oppose the annexation of the Philippines being promoted by presidents McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt. The discussion will include Boutwell's relationship with Albany figures such as Thurlow Weed, Roscoe Conkling, and Chester A. Arthur.

BOUTWELL: Radical Republican and Champion of Democracy, the first major biography by family member Jeffrey Boutwell, is as much a history of 19th century America as it is a critique of the failures of governance during a turbulent and formative period in American history. George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts, the Commonwealth’s youngest-ever governor in the 1850s, was a key figure in American public life for seven decades. Having helped create the Republican Party in the 1850s, he became a close ally and friend of presidents Lincoln and Grant during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. While in Congress, he helped write the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution and led the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson for seeking to re-establish white supremacist political control in the South. As Revenue Commissioner for Lincoln and Treasury Secretary for Grant, Boutwell helped establish the modern American economy. In the 1870s, Boutwell served in the U.S. Senate where he chaired the committee investigating the Mississippi Plan of 1875 that employed intimidation and violence to re-establish white Democratic control of the state. Remarkably, at the age of 80, Boutwell was asked to become president of the Anti-Imperialist League, working with Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, and others to oppose Teddy Roosevelt and America’s annexation of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War. George Boutwell died in 1905, having lived with his family in Groton, Mass. for more than fifty years.

Jeffrey Boutwell is a writer, historian, and public policy specialist whose forty-year career spanned journalism, government, and international scientific research and cooperation.  He has written widely on issues relating to nuclear weapons arms control, European politics, Middle East security issues, and environmental degradation and civil conflict.  He has a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a B.A. in history from Yale University, and he worked for many years at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Mass.  Jeffrey grew up in Winchester and Concord, Mass., and now lives with his wife, Buthaina Shukri, in Columbia, Maryland.  He and George Boutwell share a common ancestor, the indentured servant James Boutwell, who emigrated from England to Salem, Mass. in 1632.

Casey Seiler is the Albany Times Union’s editor in chief and vice president. He previously served as managing editor, Capitol Bureau chief and entertainment editor. He served as a co-host of WMHT’s Emmy-winning news magazine “New York Now” from 2009 to 2019. His column appears in the Sunday Perspective section. Before arriving in Albany in 2000, he worked at the Burlington Free Press in Vermont and the Jackson Hole Guide in Wyoming. A graduate of Northwestern University, Seiler is a Buffalo native who grew up in Louisville, Ky. He lives in Albany’s lovely Pine Hills.