John Albion Andrew (31 May 1818 – 30 October 1867) was Governor of Massachusetts (R) from 3 January 1861 to 4 January 1866, succeeding Nathaniel P. Banks and preceding Alexander Bullock.
Biography[]
John Albion Andrew was born in Windham, Maine on 31 May 1818, and he attended Gorham Academy and Bowdoin College; he became known for his public speaking and memory skills. He was exposed to the writings of the abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison while he was young, and he became a lawyer in 1840, joining the liberal and anti-slavery US Whig Party after his admission to the bar. In 1854, he held the first meeting of the Republican Party in Massachusetts with the goal of managing a nominating convention, but the rival Know Nothings swept state elections instead of the Republicans. After the caning of Congressman Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks, Andrew became the new voice of abolitionism in the US government, and he chaired the 1858 State Republican Committee's convention. In 1859, he helped to organize legal aid for abolitionist John Brown after his failed uprising at Harpers Ferry, and he defeated the Constitutional Union Party to become Governor of Massachusetts in 1861. He opposed the limited scope of the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation but approved of its significance, and he raised the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment as an all-African-American regiment of the US Army during the American Civil War. However, he opposed an 1862 plan to resettle 500 freed slaves from South Carolina to Massachusetts, and his views moderated towards the end of the war. He resumed with his law career after the war, and he died of apoplexy in Boston in 1867 at the age of 49.