Andrew, John Albion, 1818-1867

Andrew, John Albion, 1818-1867

ANDREW, John Albion, governor, was born on May 31, 1818, in Windham, Maine. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1837 and moved to Boston, where he was admitted to the bar in 1840. His attachment to antislavery began early in life and deepened through constant association with Boston abolitionists. He participated in several fugitive slave cases in the 1840s and 1850s, and he helped raise money for John Brown's (q.v.) legal defense and for the support of the Brown family following the Harpers Ferry raid.

Andrew entered politics during the Mexican War, gravitating toward the Conscience Whigs and into the orbit of Charles Sumner (q.v.); in 1848 he joined the Free Soil party. Active in the formation of the Massachusetts Republican party, he won a seat in the lower house of the state legislature in 1857. On the strength of his oratory, his forceful yet sociable personality, and most of all his skillful resistance to the conservative, Know-Nothing element in the party, Andrew quickly rose to prominence among Bay State Radical Republicans. In 1860, he chaired the Massachusetts delegation to the Republican National Convention, and later that year he was elected governor, the first of five consecutive terms.

In his tireless devotion to total victory, emancipation, and the welfare of black troops, Andrew was without equal among war governors. Even before delivering his first inaugural address, he had taken steps to place Massachusetts upon a war footing, and he was able to dispatch 3,000 troops to the Federal government immediately after Abraham Lincoln (q.v.) called out the militia on April 15, 1861. Andrew was effectively the unofficial war minister for New England. directing and assisting governors of neighboring states at the same time that he undertook to raise money, purchase ships, and organize and equip his own state troops. He was equally energetic in urging official Washington to prosecute the war with more vigor and to embrace emancipation as a war aim.

Among the most vocal of the state executives calling for the removal of General George B. McClellan (q.v.) following the Peninsula campaign, Andrew was also instrumental in calling the Altoona conference of governors, which assembled in September 1862 to revive Northern war enthusiasm. By January 1863, having finally won official authorization for his long campaign to enlist black soldiers, he was wholeheartedly engaged in raising the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, which he took special pains to turn into a showcase unit. He also fought for the rights of black soldiers to receive equal pay and to serve as officers.

In general agreement that Andrew was the most energetic and radical of Northern war governors, historians have debated whether he was responsible or reckless in his efforts to influence war policy. A fair judge would account him restrained in his conduct, for by his own admission Andrew was radical in principles but conservative in measures. He worked hard for Lincoln's reelection despite having opposed his renomination, and he refrained from openly criticizing Andrew Johnson (q.v.) even when Johnson's Reconstruction policy diverged sharply from his own. Indeed, Andrew's famous Valedictory Address, delivered in January 1866 upon his leaving office, was a moderate plea for enfranchising the former Confederates but not all of the former slaves. After he resumed his law practice, Andrew directed much of his energy toward channeling Northern capital into the agricultural South. He died in Boston on October 30, 1867. Hesseltine, Lincoln's War Governors; Pearson, Life of John A. Andrew.

Lawrence N. Powell

Source: Hubbell, John T. and Geary, James W., eds. Biographical Dictionary of the Union: Northern Leaders of the Civil War. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1995.