Gold standard
A gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. Three types can be distinguished: specie and exchange. In the gold specie standard the monetary unit is associated with the value of circulating gold coins, or the monetary unit has the value of a certain circulating gold coin, but other coins may be made of less valuable metal; the gold bullion standard is a system in which gold coins do not circulate, but the authorities agree to sell gold bullion on demand at a fixed price in exchange for the circulating currency. The gold exchange standard does not involve the circulation of gold coins; the main feature of the gold exchange standard is that the government guarantees a fixed exchange rate to the currency of another country that uses a gold standard, regardless of what type of notes or coins are used as a means of exchange. This creates a de facto gold standard, where the value of the means of exchange has a fixed external value in terms of gold, independent of the inherent value of the means of exchange itself.
Most nations abandoned the gold standard as the basis of their monetary systems at some point in the 20th century, although many hold substantial gold reserves. A 2012 survey of leading economists showed that they unanimously reject that a return to the gold standard would benefit the average American; the gold specie standard arose from the widespread acceptance of gold as currency. Various commodities have been used as money. Chemically, gold is of all major metals the one most resistant to corrosion; the use of gold as money began thousands of years ago in Asia Minor. During the early and high Middle Ages, the Byzantine gold solidus known as the bezant, was used throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. However, as the Byzantine Empire's economic influence declined, so too did the use of the bezant. In its place, European territories chose silver as their currency over gold, leading to the development of silver standards. Silver pennies based on the Roman denarius became the staple coin of Mercia in Great Britain around the time of King Offa, circa 757–796 CE.
Similar coins, including Italian denari, French deniers, Spanish dineros, circulated in Europe. Spanish explorers discovered silver deposits in Mexico in 1522 and at Potosí in Bolivia in 1545. International trade came to depend on coins such as the Spanish dollar, the Maria Theresa thaler, the United States trade dollar. In modern times, the British West Indies was one of the first regions to adopt a gold specie standard. Following Queen Anne's proclamation of 1704, the British West Indies gold standard was a de facto gold standard based on the Spanish gold doubloon. In 1717, Sir Isaac Newton, the master of the Royal Mint, established a new mint ratio between silver and gold that had the effect of driving silver out of circulation and putting Britain on a gold standard. A formal gold specie standard was first established in 1821, when Britain adopted it following the introduction of the gold sovereign by the new Royal Mint at Tower Hill in 1816; the United Province of Canada in 1854, Newfoundland in 1865, the United States and Germany in 1873 adopted gold.
The United States used the eagle as its unit, Germany introduced the new gold mark, while Canada adopted a dual system based on both the American gold eagle and the British gold sovereign. Australia and New Zealand adopted the British gold standard, as did the British West Indies, while Newfoundland was the only British Empire territory to introduce its own gold coin. Royal Mint branches were established in Sydney and Perth for the purpose of minting gold sovereigns from Australia's rich gold deposits; the gold specie standard came to an end in the United Kingdom and the rest of the British Empire with the outbreak of World War I. From 1750 to 1870, wars within Europe as well as an ongoing trade deficit with China drained silver from the economies of Western Europe and the United States. Coins were struck in smaller and smaller numbers, there was a proliferation of bank and stock notes used as money. In the 1790s, the United Kingdom suffered a silver shortage, it ceased to mint larger silver coins and instead issued "token" silver coins and overstruck foreign coins.
With the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Bank of England began the massive recoinage programme that created standard gold sovereigns, circulating crowns, half-crowns and copper farthings in 1821. The recoinage of silver after a long drought produced a burst of coins; the United Kingdom struck nearly 40 million shillings between 1816 and 1820, 17 million half crowns and 1.3 million silver crowns. The 1819 Act for the Resumption of Cash Payments set 1823 as the date for resumption of convertibility, reached by 1821. Throughout the 1820s, small notes were issued by regional banks; this was restricted in 1826. In 1833 however, Bank of England notes were made legal tender and redemption by other banks was discouraged. In 1844, the Bank Charter Act established that Bank of England notes were backed by gold and they became the legal standard. According to the strict interpretation of the gold standard, this 1844 act marked the establishment of a full gold standard for British money. In the 1780s, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Morris and Alexander Hamilton recommended to Congress the value of a decimal system.
This system would apply to monies in the United States. The question was what type of standard: silver or both; the United States adopted a silver standard based on the Spanish milled dollar i
Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland was an American politician and lawyer, the 22nd and 24th president of the United States, the only president in American history to serve two non-consecutive terms in office. He won the popular vote for three presidential elections—in 1884, 1888, 1892—and was one of two Democrats to be elected president during the era of Republican political domination dating from 1861 to 1933. Cleveland was the leader of the pro-business Bourbon Democrats who opposed high tariffs, Free Silver, inflation and subsidies to business, farmers, or veterans, his crusade for political reform and fiscal conservatism made him an icon for American conservatives of the era. Cleveland won praise for his honesty, self-reliance and commitment to the principles of classical liberalism, he fought political corruption and bossism. As a reformer, Cleveland had such prestige that the like-minded wing of the Republican Party, called "Mugwumps" bolted the GOP presidential ticket and swung to his support in the 1884 election.
As his second administration began, disaster hit the nation when the Panic of 1893 produced a severe national depression, which Cleveland was unable to reverse. It ruined his Democratic Party, opening the way for a Republican landslide in 1894 and for the agrarian and silverite seizure of the Democratic Party in 1896; the result was a political realignment that ended the Third Party System and launched the Fourth Party System and the Progressive Era. Cleveland was a formidable policymaker, he drew corresponding criticism, his intervention in the Pullman Strike of 1894 to keep the railroads moving angered labor unions nationwide in addition to the party in Illinois. Critics complained that Cleveland had little imagination and seemed overwhelmed by the nation's economic disasters—depressions and strikes—in his second term. So, his reputation for probity and good character survived the troubles of his second term. Biographer Allan Nevins wrote, "n Grover Cleveland, the greatness lies in typical rather than unusual qualities.
He had no endowments. He possessed honesty, firmness and common sense, but he possessed them to a degree other men do not." By the end of his second term, public perception showed him to be one of the most unpopular U. S. presidents, he was by rejected by most Democrats. Today, Cleveland is considered by most historians to have been a successful leader ranked among the upper-mid tier of American presidents. Stephen Grover Cleveland was born on March 18, 1837, in Caldwell, New Jersey, to Ann and Richard Falley Cleveland. Cleveland's father was a Congregational and Presbyterian minister, from Connecticut, his mother was the daughter of a bookseller. On his father's side, Cleveland was descended from English ancestors, the first of the family having emigrated to Massachusetts from Cleveland, England in 1635, his father's maternal grandfather, Richard Falley Jr. fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill, was the son of an immigrant from Guernsey. On his mother's side, Cleveland was descended from Anglo-Irish Protestants and German Quakers from Philadelphia.
Cleveland was distantly related to General Moses Cleaveland, after whom the city of Cleveland, was named. Cleveland, the fifth of nine children, was named Stephen Grover in honor of the first pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Caldwell, where his father was pastor at the time, he became known as Grover in his adult life. In 1841, the Cleveland family moved to Fayetteville, New York, where Grover spent much of his childhood. Neighbors described him as "full of fun and inclined to play pranks," and fond of outdoor sports. In 1850, Cleveland's father moved to Clinton, New York, to work as district secretary for the American Home Missionary Society. Despite his father's dedication to his missionary work, the income was insufficient for the large family. Financial conditions forced him to remove Grover from school into a two-year mercantile apprenticeship in Fayetteville; the experience was valuable and brief, the living conditions quite austere. Grover returned to his schooling at the completion of the apprentice contract.
In 1853, when missionary work began to take a toll on his health, Cleveland's father took an assignment in Holland Patent, New York and the family moved again. Shortly after, he died from a gastric ulcer, with Grover reputedly hearing of his father's death from a boy selling newspapers. Cleveland received his elementary education at the Fayetteville Academy and the Clinton Liberal Academy. After his father died in 1853, he again left school to help support his family; that year, Cleveland's brother William was hired as a teacher at the New York Institute for the Blind in New York City, William obtained a place for Cleveland as an assistant teacher. He returned home to Holland Patent at the end of 1854, where an elder in his church offered to pay for his college education if he would promise to become a minister. Cleveland declined, in 1855 he decided to move west, he stopped first in New York, where his uncle, Lewis F. Allen, gave him a clerical job. Allen was an important man in Buffalo, he introduced his nephew to influential men there, including the partners in the law firm of Rogers and Rogers.
Millard Fillmore, the 13th president of the United States, had worked for the partnership. Cleveland took a clerkship with the firm, began to read the law, was admitted to the New York bar in 1859. Cleveland
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard is the coastal defense and maritime law enforcement branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's seven uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, multi-mission service unique among the U. S. military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency mission as part of its mission set. It operates under the U. S. Department of Homeland Security during peacetime, can be transferred to the U. S. Department of the Navy by the U. S. President at any time, or by the U. S. Congress during times of war; this has happened twice: in 1917, during World War I, in 1941, during World War II. Created by Congress on 4 August 1790 at the request of Alexander Hamilton as the Revenue-Marine, it is the oldest continuous seagoing service of the United States; as Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton headed the Revenue-Marine, whose original purpose was collecting customs duties in the nation's seaports. By the 1860s, the service was known as the U.
S. Revenue Cutter Service and the term Revenue-Marine fell into disuse; the modern Coast Guard was formed by a merger of the Revenue Cutter Service and the U. S. Life-Saving Service on 28 January 1915, under the U. S. Department of the Treasury; as one of the country's five armed services, the Coast Guard has been involved in every U. S. war from 1790 to the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan. The Coast Guard has 40,992 men and women on active duty, 7,000 reservists, 31,000 auxiliarists, 8,577 full-time civilian employees, for a total workforce of 87,569; the Coast Guard maintains an extensive fleet of 243 coastal and ocean-going patrol ships, tenders and icebreakers called "cutters", 1650 smaller boats, as well as an extensive aviation division consisting of 201 helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. While the U. S. Coast Guard is the smallest of the U. S. military service branches in terms of membership, the U. S. Coast Guard by itself is the world's 12th largest naval force; the Coast Guard carries out three basic roles, which are further subdivided into eleven statutory missions.
The three roles are: Maritime safety Maritime security Maritime stewardshipWith a decentralized organization and much responsibility placed on the most junior personnel, the Coast Guard is lauded for its quick responsiveness and adaptability in a broad range of emergencies. In a 2005 article in Time magazine following Hurricane Katrina, the author wrote, "the Coast Guard's most valuable contribution to may be as a model of flexibility, most of all, spirit." Wil Milam, a rescue swimmer from Alaska told the magazine, "In the Navy, it was all about the mission. Practicing for war, training for war. In the Coast Guard, it was, take care of our people and the mission will take care of itself." The eleven statutory missions as defined by law are divided into homeland security missions and non-homeland security missions: Ice operations, including the International Ice Patrol Living marine resources Marine environmental protection Marine safety Aids to navigation Search and rescue Defense readiness Maritime law enforcement Migrant interdiction Ports and coastal security Drug interdiction See National Search and Rescue Committee See Joint Rescue Coordination CentersWhile the U.
S. Coast Guard Search and Rescue is not the oldest search and rescue organization in the world, it is one of the Coast Guard's best-known operations; the National Search and Rescue Plan designates the Coast Guard as the federal agency responsible for maritime SAR operations, the United States Air Force as the federal agency responsible for inland SAR. Both agencies maintain rescue coordination centers to coordinate this effort, have responsibility for both military and civilian search and rescue; the two services jointly provide instructor staff for the National Search and Rescue School that trains SAR mission planners and coordinators. Located on Governors Island, New York, the school is now located at Coast Guard Training Center Yorktown at Yorktown, Virginia. Operated by the Coast Guard, the National Response Center is the sole U. S. Government point of contact for reporting all oil, radiological and etiological spills and discharges into the environment, anywhere in the United States and its territories.
In addition to gathering and distributing spill/incident information for Federal On Scene Coordinators and serving as the communications and operations center for the National Response Team, the NRC maintains agreements with a variety of federal entities to make additional notifications regarding incidents meeting established trigger criteria. The NRC takes Maritime Suspicious Activity and Security Breach Reports. Details on the NRC organization and specific responsibilities can be found in the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan; the Marine Information for Safety and Law Enforcement database system is managed and used by the Coast Guard for tracking pollution and safety incidents in the nation's ports. The National Maritime Center is the merchant mariner credentialing authority for the USCG under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security. To ensure a safe and environmentally sound marine transportation system, the mission of the NMC is to issue credentials to qualified mariners in the United States maritime jurisdiction.
The five uniformed services that make up the U. S. Armed Forces are defined in Title 10 of the U. S. Code: The term "armed forces" means the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard; the Coast Guard is further defined by Title 14 of the United States Code: The Coast Guar
Spanish–American War
The Spanish–American War was an armed conflict between Spain and the United States in 1898. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of USS Maine in Havana harbor in Cuba, leading to U. S. intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. The war led to emergence of U. S. predominance in the Caribbean region, resulted in U. S. acquisition of Spain's Pacific possessions. That led to U. S. involvement in the Philippine Revolution and in the Philippine–American War. The main issue was Cuban independence. Revolts had been occurring for some years in Cuba against Spanish rule; the U. S. backed these revolts upon entering the Spanish–American War. There had been war scares before, as in the Virginius Affair in 1873, but in the late 1890s, American public opinion was agitated by reports of gruesome Spanish atrocities; the business community had just recovered from a deep depression and feared that a war would reverse the gains. It lobbied vigorously against going to war. President William McKinley sought a peaceful settlement.
The United States Navy armored cruiser USS Maine mysteriously sank in Havana Harbor. McKinley signed a joint Congressional resolution demanding Spanish withdrawal and authorizing the President to use military force to help Cuba gain independence on April 20, 1898. In response, Spain severed diplomatic relations with the United States on April 21. On the same day, the U. S. Navy began a blockade of Cuba. Both sides declared war; the ten-week war was fought in both the Pacific. As U. S. agitators for war well knew, U. S. naval power would prove decisive, allowing expeditionary forces to disembark in Cuba against a Spanish garrison facing nationwide Cuban insurgent attacks and further wasted by yellow fever. The invaders obtained the surrender of Santiago de Cuba and Manila despite the good performance of some Spanish infantry units and fierce fighting for positions such as San Juan Hill. Madrid sued for peace after two Spanish squadrons were sunk in Santiago de Cuba and Manila Bay and a third, more modern, fleet was recalled home to protect the Spanish coasts.
The result was the 1898 Treaty of Paris, negotiated on terms favorable to the U. S. which allowed it temporary control of Cuba and ceded ownership of Puerto Rico and the Philippine islands. The cession of the Philippines involved payment of $20 million to Spain by the U. S. to cover infrastructure owned by Spain. The defeat and loss of the last remnants of the Spanish Empire was a profound shock to Spain's national psyche and provoked a thorough philosophical and artistic reevaluation of Spanish society known as the Generation of'98; the United States gained several island possessions spanning the globe and a rancorous new debate over the wisdom of expansionism. The combined problems arising from the Peninsular War, the loss of most of its colonies in the Americas in the early 19th-century Spanish American wars of independence, three Carlist Wars marked the low point of Spanish colonialism. Liberal Spanish elites like Antonio Cánovas del Castillo and Emilio Castelar offered new interpretations of the concept of "empire" to dovetail with Spain's emerging nationalism.
Cánovas made clear in an address to the University of Madrid in 1882 his view of the Spanish nation as based on shared cultural and linguistic elements – on both sides of the Atlantic – that tied Spain's territories together. Cánovas saw Spanish imperialism as markedly different in its methods and purposes of colonization from those of rival empires like the British or French. Spaniards regarded the spreading of civilization and Christianity as Spain's major objective and contribution to the New World; the concept of cultural unity bestowed special significance on Cuba, Spanish for four hundred years, was viewed as an integral part of the Spanish nation. The focus on preserving the empire would have negative consequences for Spain's national pride in the aftermath of the Spanish–American War. In 1823, the fifth American President James Monroe enunciated the Monroe Doctrine, which stated that the United States would not tolerate further efforts by European governments to retake or expand their colonial holdings in the Americas or to interfere with the newly independent states in the hemisphere.
S. would respect the status of the existing European colonies. Before the American Civil War, Southern interests attempted to have the United States purchase Cuba and convert it into a new slave territory; the pro-slavery element proposed the Ostend Manifesto proposal of 1854. It was rejected by anti-slavery forces. After the American Civil War and Cuba's Ten Years' War, U. S. businessmen began monopolizing the devalued sugar markets in Cuba. In 1894, 90% of Cuba's total exports went to the United States, which provided 40% of Cuba's imports. Cuba's total exports to the U. S. were twelve times larger than the export to her mother country, Spain. U. S. business interests indicated that while Spain still held political authority over Cuba, economic authority in Cuba, acting-authority, was shifting to the US. The U. S. became interested in a trans-isthmus canal either in Nicaragua, or in Panama, where the Panama Canal would be built, realized the need for naval protection. Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan was an influential theorist.
S. built a p
William P. Fessenden
William Pitt Fessenden was an American politician from the U. S. state of Maine. Fessenden was a member of the Fessenden political family, he served in the United States House of Representatives and Senate before becoming Secretary of the Treasury under President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. A lawyer, he was a leading antislavery Whig in Maine, he built an antislavery coalition in the state legislature that elected him to the U. S. Senate. In the Senate, Fessenden played a central role in the debates on Kansas, denouncing the expansion of slavery, he led Radical Republicans in attacking Democrats Stephen Douglas, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan. Fessenden's speeches were read influencing Republicans such as Abraham Lincoln and building support for Lincoln's 1860 Republican presidential nomination. During the war, Senator Fessenden helped shape the Union's taxation and financial policies, he moderated his earlier radicalism, supported Lincoln against the Radicals, becoming Lincoln's Treasury Secretary.
After the war, Fessenden was back in the Senate, as chair of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which established terms for resuming congressional representation for the southern states, which drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Fessenden provided critical support that prevented Senate conviction of President Andrew Johnson, impeached by the House, he was the first Republican Senator to ring out "...not guilty" followed by six other Republican Senators resulting in the acquittal of President Johnson. He is the only person to have three streets in Portland named for him: William and Fessenden streets in the city's Oakdale neighborhood. Fessenden was born in Boscawen, New Hampshire, on October 16, 1806, his father was legislator Samuel Fessenden. His mother was Ruth Greene; the parents were unmarried. William was separated from his mother at his birth, he was raised by his paternal grandmother for seven years, he graduated from Bowdoin College in 1823 and studied law.
He was a founding member of the Maine Temperance Society in 1827. That year he was admitted to the bar, he practiced with his father, a prominent anti-slavery activist. He practiced law first in Bridgton, Maine, a year in Bangor, afterward in Portland, he was its leading debater. He refused nominations to Congress in 1831 and in 1838, served in the Maine legislature again in 1840, becoming chairman of the house committee to revise the statutes of the state, he was elected for one term in the United States House of Representatives as a Whig in 1840. During this term, he moved to repeal the rule that excluded anti-slavery petitions and spoke upon the loan and bankrupt bills, the army. At the end of his term in Congress, he turned his attention wholly to his law business until he was again in the Maine legislature in 1845–46, he acquired a national reputation as a lawyer and an anti-slavery Whig, in 1849 prosecuted before the United States Supreme Court an appeal from an adverse decision of Judge Joseph Story, gained a reversal by an argument which Daniel Webster pronounced the best he had heard in twenty years.
He was again in the Maine legislature in 1853 and 1854. Fessenden's strong anti-slavery principles caused his election to the U. S. Senate in 1854, with the support of Whigs and Anti-Slavery Democrats. Upon taking office, he began speaking against the Kansas–Nebraska Act, his speech on the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty, in 1856, received the highest praise, in 1858 his speech on the Lecompton Constitution of Kansas, his criticisms of the opinion of the supreme court in the Dred Scott case, were considered the ablest discussion of those topics. He participated in the organization of the Republican Party, being re-elected to the Senate from that group in 1860, this time without the formality of a nomination. In 1861, he was a member of the Peace Congress. By the secession of the Southern senators, the Republicans acquired control of the senate and placed Fessenden at the head of the finance committee. During the Civil War, he was the most conspicuous senator in sustaining the national credit, he opposed the Legal unjust.
As chairman of the finance committee, Fessenden prepared and carried through the senate all measures relating to revenue and appropriations, and, as declared by Charles Sumner, was "in the financial field all that our best generals were in arms." President Abraham Lincoln appointed Fessenden United States Secretary of the Treasury upon Salmon P. Chase's resignation, it was the darkest hour of national finances of the United States. Chase had just withdrawn a loan from the market for want of acceptable bids, the capacity of the country to lend seemed exhausted; the currency had been enormously inflated: the paper dollar was worth only 34 cents. Fessenden at first refused the office, but at last, accepted in obedience to the universal public pressure; when his acceptance became known, gold fell to $225/ounce. He declared that no more currency should be issued, making an appeal to the people, he prepared and put upon the market the seven-thirty loan, which proved a triumphant success; this loan was in the form of bonds bearing interest at the rate of 7.30%, which were issued in denominations as low as $50 so that people of moderate means could take them.
He framed and recommended the measures, adopted by congress, which permitted the subsequent consolidation and funding of the government loans int
George S. Boutwell
George Sewall Boutwell was an American politician and statesman from Massachusetts. He served as Secretary of the Treasury under U. S. President Ulysses S. Grant, the 20th Governor of Massachusetts, a Senator and Representative from Massachusetts and the first Commissioner of Internal Revenue under U. S. President Abraham Lincoln, he was a leader in the impeachment of U. S. President Andrew Johnson. Boutwell, an abolitionist, is known for his leadership in the formation of the Republican Party, his championship of African American citizenship and suffrage rights during Reconstruction; as U. S. Representative, he was instrumental in the construction and passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution; as Secretary of Treasury, he made needed reforms in the Treasury Department after the chaos of the American Civil War and the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. He controversially reduced the national debt by selling Treasury gold and using greenbacks to buy up Treasury bonds, a process that created a cash shortage.
Boutwell and President Grant thwarted an attempt to corner the gold market in September 1869 by releasing $4,000,000 of gold into the economy. As U. S. Senator, Boutwell sponsored the Civil Rights Act of 1875. In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Boutwell commissioner to codify the Revised Statutes of the United States and in 1880 to serve as United States counsel before the French and American Claims Commission, he practiced international law in other diplomatic fora. At the turn of the 20th century, he abandoned the Republican Party, opposed the acquisition of the Philippines, supported William Jennings Bryan for President. George S. Boutwell was born on January 1818 in Brookline, Massachusetts. According to his autobiographical memoir, Boutwell was raised on his family's farm in Lunenburg and attended public schools until the age of seventeen. During the summer months he worked barefooted, tending picking chestnuts. Boutwell was educated in arithmetic, algebra and Latin grammar. From 1830 to 1835, Boutwell worked as an apprentice and clerk for Simeon Heywood, who owned a palm leaf hat store.
While completing his education, Boutwell worked as a teacher in Pound Hill. Boutwell finished his primary school education in February 1835. From 1835 to 1838, Boutwell worked as a shopkeeper in Groton, Massachusetts. In 1836, he began to study law under attorney Bradford Russell, whose office was above the store where he clerked. Boutwell did not enter into active practice until many years later. In 1838, the shop owner offered Boutwell a partnership in the shop. While Boutwell ran the store, he began a personal regimen of reading and writing in an effort to make up for having chosen not to attend college. Boutwell made his public career debut in 1839, when he served as a pension agent for widows of the American Revolutionary War, which had ended in 1783, he traveled to Washington D. C. and was impressed after seeing Daniel Webster. After talking with a black slave woman whose youngest child had been sold to Louisiana, Boutwell became dedicated to the anti-slavery cause. Boutwell married Sarah Adelia Thayer on July 8, 1841.
Sarah was the daughter of Nathan Hayler from New Hampshire. Their marriage produced two children: Francis. Entering politics as a Democrat and supporter of Martin Van Buren, Boutwell was appointed head of the Groton post office by his business partner, appointed postmaster. Boutwell's first entry into elective politics was a successful run for the Groton School Committee as a Temperance Party candidate; the success prompted him to run for the state legislature on the same party's ticket. In 1840, he won the Democratic Party nomination, despite temperance opinions that were "offensive to many", but lost in a Whig landslide, he won on the third try, defeating incumbent John Boynton in 1841. He won reelection twice before being defeated in 1844. Although he lost in 1845, he was returned to the state legislature in the 1846 election, serving from 1847 to 1850, his elective successes, sometimes in the face of major Whig victories statewide, highlighted Boutwell's potential, brought him into the Democratic Party's leadership circles.
He sat on the judiciary and finance committees, where he gained a reputation for thorough research into legislation, advocated positions favoring free trade, restraint of the money supply, increased taxes for spending on education and other reforms. He supported the Mexican -- American War. While in the state House of Representatives, Boutwell ran three times for United States House of Representatives, losing by significant margins to his Whig opponents. In 1848, he was considered for the Democratic nomination for governor, placing third in the nominating convention. In 1849, he was appointed state banking commissioner by Whig Governor George N. Briggs, a position in which he inspected bank charters that were subject to renewal. In this position, he gained a wealth of experience in matters of finance. Throughout the 1840s, the issue of the abolition of slavery grew to become a significant force in Massachusetts politics. Outrage over the extension of slavery into territories acquired in the Mexican–American War increased the popularity of the Free Soil Party, but they and the Democrats were unable to unite to unseat the Whigs who dominated state politics until 1850.
In 1849, Boutwell won the Democratic nomination for governor. Because no candidate won a majority, the Whig-controll
Cabinet of the United States
The Cabinet of the United States is part of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States. The Cabinet's role, inferred from the language of the Opinion Clause of the Constitution, is to serve as an advisory body to the President of the United States. Additionally, the Twenty-fifth Amendment authorizes the Vice President, together with a majority of certain members of the Cabinet, to declare the president "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office". Among the senior officers of the Cabinet are the Vice President and the heads of the federal executive departments, all of whom—if eligible—are in the line of succession. Members of the Cabinet serve at the pleasure of the President, who can dismiss them at will for no cause. All federal public officials, including Cabinet members, are subject to impeachment by the House of Representatives and trial in the Senate for "treason and other high crimes and misdemeanors"; the President can unilaterally designate senior White House staffers, heads of other federal agencies as members of the Cabinet, although this is a symbolic status marker and does not, apart from attending Cabinet meetings, confer any additional powers.
The tradition of the Cabinet arose out of the debates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention regarding whether the president would exercise executive authority singly or collaboratively with a cabinet of ministers or a privy council. As a result of the debates, the Constitution vests "all executive power" in the president singly, authorizes—but does not compel—the president to "require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices"; the Constitution does not specify what the executive departments will be, how many there will be, or what their duties should be. George Washington, the first U. S. President, organized his principal officers into a Cabinet, it has been part of the executive branch structure since. Washington's Cabinet consisted of five members: himself, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox and Attorney General Edmund Randolph.
Vice President John Adams was not included in Washington's Cabinet because the position was regarded as a legislative officer. It was not until the 20th century that Vice Presidents were included as members of the Cabinet and came to be regarded as a member of the executive branch. Presidents have used Cabinet meetings of selected principal officers but to differing extents and for different purposes. Secretary of State William H. Seward and Professor Woodrow Wilson advocated the use of a parliamentary-style Cabinet government, but President Abraham Lincoln rebuffed Seward, Woodrow Wilson would have none of it in his administration. In recent administrations, Cabinets have grown to include key White House staff in addition to department and various agency heads. President Ronald Reagan formed seven subcabinet councils to review many policy issues, subsequent Presidents have followed that practice. In 3 U. S. C. § 302 with regard to delegation of authority by the President, it is provided that "nothing herein shall be deemed to require express authorization in any case in which such an official would be presumed in law to have acted by authority or direction of the President."
This pertains directly to the heads of the executive departments as each of their offices is created and specified by statutory law and thus gives them the authority to act for the President within their areas of responsibility without any specific delegation. Under the 1967 Federal Anti-Nepotism statute, federal officials are prohibited from appointing their immediate family members to certain governmental positions, including those in the Cabinet. Under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, an administration may appoint acting heads of department from employees of the relevant department; these may be existing high-level career employees, from political appointees of the outgoing administration, or sometimes lower-level appointees of the administration. The heads of the executive departments and all other federal agency heads are nominated by the President and presented to the Senate for confirmation or rejection by a simple majority. If approved, they receive their commission scroll, are sworn in and begin their duties.
An elected Vice President does not require Senate confirmation, nor does the White House Chief of Staff, an appointed staff position of the Executive Office of the President. The heads of the executive departments and most other senior federal officers at cabinet or sub-cabinet level receive their salary under a fixed five-level pay plan known as the Executive Schedule, codified in Title 5 of the United States Code. Twenty-one positions, including the heads of the executive departments and others, receiving Level I pay are listed in 5 U. S. C. § 5312, those forty-six positions on Level II pay are listed in 5 U. S. C. § 5313. As of January 2016, the Level I annual pay was set at $205,700; the annual salary of the Vice President is $235,300. The salary level was set by the Government Salary Reform Act of 1989, which provides an automatic cost of living adjustment for federal employees; the Vice President receives th
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "McCulloch, Hugh". Encyclopædia Britannica. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 207.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 
