Charles A. Boutelle

Charles A. Boutelle

Charles Addison Boutelle (born February 9, 1839 in Damariscotta , Lincoln County , Maine , †  May 21, 1901 in Waverly , Massachusetts ) was an American politician . Between 1883 and 1901 he represented the state of Maine in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Charles Boutelle attended public schools in Brunswick and then the Yarmouth Academy . Then he went to sea as a seaman. In 1860 he received his ship master's license . He served in the US Navy during the Civil War . He was used in the blockade of the Confederates in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico . He was in some sea battles and the capture of Mobile ( Alabama involved). There he accepted the surrender of the Confederate fleet . Then he received the supreme command of the naval units in the area of ​​the Mississippi estuary . In January 1866 he was honorably retired from the Navy.

After the war, Boutelle was the captain of a steamship that operated between New York and Wilmington . In 1870 he got into the newspaper business. He moved to Bangor , Maine, where he bought and edited a newspaper affiliated with the Republican Party . He remained the owner of this newspaper until 1900. Boutelle became a member of the Republican Party himself. In 1876 he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Cincinnati , where Rutherford B. Hayes was nominated as a candidate for president. He was also on the party's state board for Maine.

In the congressional elections of 1882, which were exceptionally held nationwide, Boutelle was elected to the fourth seat of Maine in the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC . There he took over from George W. Ladd on March 4, 1883 . In the following nine congressional elections, he was confirmed in his mandate. This allowed him to remain in Congress until his resignation on March 3, 1901 . There he was chairman of the naval committee for four legislative terms. In this committee he successfully campaigned for the expansion of the American navy. It was then that the first steel battleships were built. The shipyards in Maine also benefited from the orders to build these ships. In Congress, Boutelle represented the Republican positions, especially against the policies of President Grover Cleveland . The Spanish-American War of 1898 also fell during his time in the House of Representatives .

Boutelle was also re-elected in 1900 for the legislative period that ran until March 3, 1903. For health reasons, however, he could no longer start his new term of office. He resigned on March 3, 1901, the last day of the previous legislative period. Charles Boutelle died a few weeks later in a Massachusetts hospital. He was buried in Bangor.

Web links

• Charles A. Boutelle in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Charles A. Boutelle in the database of Find a Grave (English)