George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts was a key figure in American public life for seven decades. He was a close ally of Presidents Lincoln and Grant in the fight for racial and economic equality during the Civil War and Reconstruction Era, and later led the anti-imperialist opposition to Presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt over the annexation of the Philippines.

Join us as Boutwell’s descendant, Dr. Jeffrey Boutwell, explores the life of this remarkable individual and examines 19th-century politics and the failures of governance during a turbulent and formative period in American history.

Dr. Jeffrey Boutwell is a writer, historian, and public policy specialist with a forty-year career spanning journalism, government, and international scientific cooperation. He has written extensively on nuclear arms control, European politics, and Middle East security. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from MIT and a B.A. in history from Yale, and previously worked at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His newest book, BOUTWELL: Radical Republican and Champion of Democracy (W.W. Norton, 2025), is a biography of his ancestor George S. Boutwell, a leading figure of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.