Mrs. Eddy Mentioned Them February 8, 1958 Issue

John Albion Andrew, 1818—1867

[Mentioned in Poems, Pref., p vi]

John Albion Andrew won lasting fame as governor of Massachusetts during the Civil War. His entrance into politics did not come until after twenty years of law practice, but immediately upon his election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, he manifested his ability in debate and his power as a speaker.

Andrew was born in South Windham, Maine, and took his liberal arts degree at Bowdoin College, where Longfellow was one of his teachers. Andrew was poet of his class and always loved poetry. At Bowdoin he heard the English abolitionist, George Thompson, and ever after he was an abolitionist himself. He believed it possible to hate slavery without hating the slave owner and advocated procuring freedom through constitutional means rather than through violence.

In 1860 Andrew headed the Massachusetts delegation to the Republican convention in Chicago which nominated Lincoln for the presidency. Andrew said of Lincoln, "My eyes were never visited with the vision of a human face in which more transparent honesty and more benignant kindness were combined with more of the intellect and firmness which belong to masculine humanity." The same year Andrew was elected governor by the largest majority ever obtained up to that time—this in spite of his having helped to procure counsel for the defense of John Brown in Virginia and having presided at the meeting for the benefit of John Brown's family, causes not popular in the North.

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