Governor of Massachusetts
When Andrew took office on January 2, 1861, on the eve of the Civil War, the Albany Argus called him "a lawyer of a low type and a brutal fanatic" who "proposes to maintain the condemned statutes of, and to force upon the South by arms, an allegiance to the Constitution thus violated." Andrew immediately began to ready the Massachusetts militia for duty. He also asked the governors of Maine and New Hampshire to prepare for war. Among his early actions were to accept recruits from other states to serve in Massachusetts regiments, including 500 men from California who he encouraged to join the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry in 1862 and early 1863.
Andrew's strong feelings about emancipation are clearly expressed in the following quote from an 1862 speech:
| “ | I know not what record of sin awaits me in the other world, but this I know, that I was never mean enough to despise any man because he was black. | ” |
Andrew was receptive to the concept of using black men as uniformed soldiers in the Union army. In April 1862 he begin working closely with the Federal government and with Frederick Douglass. He wrote letters to different states and to Lincoln trying to get support. He authorized the formation of two regiments of black infantry, the 54th and 55th Massachusetts, composed of blacks from the state, as well as Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and other states. Shortly after the Battle of Antietam, Andrew became one of the leading state executives at the Loyal War Governors' Conference in Altoona, Pennsylvania, which ultimately backed Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the war effort.
In 1864, Andrew wrote a letter to his close friend and distant cousin President Abraham Lincoln describing a woman named Lydia Bixby who lost five sons in battle and asking Lincoln to express his condolences. Lincoln then sent the famous Letter to Mrs. Bixby to Bixby, who turned out to not only dislike Lincoln, but was also a Confederate sympathizer.
He left the office of governor in 1866 and again took up the practice of law, although he intended to remain active in politics. Having associated with the Radical Republicans during the war, Andrew took a more conciliatory tone towards Reconstruction, and did not favor some of the Radical Republicans' more extreme measures.
He died in 1867 of apoplexy after having tea at his home in Boston. He is buried in the Hingham (Old Ship) Cemetery in Hingham, Massachusetts.
Read more about this topic: John Albion Andrew
Famous quotes related to governor of massachusetts:
“Three years ago, also, when the Sims tragedy was acted, I said to myself, There is such an officer, if not such a man, as the Governor of Massachusetts,—what has he been about the last fortnight? Has he had as much as he could do to keep on the fence during this moral earthquake?... He could at least have resigned himself into fame.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)