Harold Holzer (Director, The Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute (Hunter College)), The First IRS Commissioner: ‘The Most Consequential Public Figure Americans Have Never Heard Of’ (reviewing Jeffrey Boutwell, Boutwell: Radical Republican and Champion of Democracy (2025)):
America’s first IRS commissioner helped raise the vast sums needed to wage the Civil War and was a strong advocate of racial equality.
It took not a village of historians but a lone descendant to rescue George S. Boutwell from the dustbin of American memory. Viewed by many in his own time as both radical and rigid, “hiding in plain sight” since the post-Civil War period, Boutwell has long deserved resurrection. He was—cue the fast-approaching debate over tax cuts—America’s first IRS commissioner.
Now comes Jeffrey Boutwell—a cousin several generations removed and the author of previous books on security issues—to argue that George Boutwell ranks as “the most consequential public figure Americans have never heard of.” This commendably balanced and well-researched biography demonstrates that his kinsman is indeed worth remembering.
Born in Brookline, Mass., in 1818, George Sewall Boutwell worked on the family farm, apprenticed with a village postmaster, studied law, advanced to the state legislature, was governor at age 33 and later served as both a congressman and a U.S. senator. His greatest role was helping raise the vast sums of money needed to wage the Civil War—a staggering million dollars a day by 1862.
To collect it, Boutwell recruited and managed the largest workforce in the government: a civilian army of some 4,000 clerks and agents. Although Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase earned the lion’s share of recognition, Boutwell created the unprecedented revenue department. …
What certainly merits renewed attention are Boutwell’s remarkably advanced positions on slavery, civil rights and an assortment of then-fringe positions that marked him not only as ahead of his time but as fully “woke” at a moment when most Americans were still unconscious.
Boutwell favored a shorter workweek, the secret ballot, penal reform, female education (though not suffrage), progressive taxation and Electoral College reform. Unlike some of his fellow New England abolitionists, he believed in racial equality. He fought longer than most to extend Reconstruction, hoping black citizenship would take hold in the former Confederacy. He advocated tirelessly for the constitutional amendments guaranteeing birthright citizenship and ballot access. And Boutwell led the failed effort to remove the racist Andrew Johnson from the White House. …
Boutwell’s erasure likely owes the most to his brittle Yankee personality. While some contemporaries acknowledged his honesty and work ethic, critics found him “cunning” and “too much of a scold.” Such characteristics often earn grudging respect, but seldom affection. Jimmy Carter, who often rubbed people much the same way, would probably have loved George Boutwell.
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