When Andrew took office on January 2, 1861, on the eve of the American Civil War, the
Albany Argus called him "a lawyer of a low type and a brutal fanatic" who "proposes to maintain the condemned [personal liberty] statutes of [Massachusetts], and to force upon the South by arms, an allegiance to the Constitution thus violated." In the early war years that followed, Andrew was a persistent radical voice, pressuring President Abraham Lincoln on the conduct of the war and the need to end slavery. Shortly after taking office, Andrew began to ready the Massachusetts
militia for duty, promoting younger and more vigorous leaders, and contracting for updated armaments, equipment, and supplies. He also wrote to the governors of
Maine and
New Hampshire, urging them to also step up preparations. Once hostilities broke out, he also took the lead to update the state's coastal defenses, which were in poor condition and largely obsolete. Taking this step without federal authorization or funding, he secured bank loans from major Boston banks to fund the effort in the interim. With the war already underway in late 1861, Andrew engaged in a highly public dispute with General
Benjamin Franklin Butler, who sought to appoint officers of regiments he recruited. Andrew ended up winning in the disagreement, and (in a response viewed at the time as somewhat petulant) refused to appoint any of Butler's choices to those positions. Andrew was a regular voice, although somewhat muted in public statements, in the drive to declare an end to slavery. When Lincoln announced his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862 (shortly after the Union victory in the
Battle of Antietam), Andrew was supportive, but called it "a poor
document but a mighty
act", and complained that it was too limited in scope and late in becoming effective. Andrew was one of the leading state executives at the Loyal
War Governors' Conference in
Altoona, Pennsylvania, held in late September 1862, which ultimately backed the Emancipation Proclamation and the continued war effort. Andrew was a leading force in promoting the enlistment of black men as uniformed soldiers in the
Union Army, although the state legislature was at first reluctant to authorize it. Abolitionist
Frederick Douglass had advocated this from the start of the war, and Andrew viewed it as a necessary equalizing step, and a means to fill the state's enlistment quotas with something other than factory workers. After lobbying the administration, Andrew was granted permission to raise a black regiment in January 1863. Due to Massachusetts's small black population, the
54th (and then also the
55th) Massachusetts were composed of blacks recruited not just from Massachusetts, but also
Ohio,
New York,
Pennsylvania, and other states. Andrew wanted the regiments to be staffed by black officers, but this was rejected, and their officers were instead hand-picked by Andrew from strong abolitionist circles. He was also supportive of efforts by the recruits to receive equal pay; he offered them money from the state to do so, but they refused, holding out for equal pay from the federal government. He was somewhat less receptive to the relocation of freed slaves to Massachusetts, objecting to a plan to send 500 of them to Massachusetts from
South Carolina in 1862. By the end of the war, Andrew's politics had moderated. In late 1865, he expressed support for the Reconstruction policies of President Andrew Johnson, resulting in a split with his longtime political ally Charles Sumner. With the war at an end in 1865, he decided not to run for reelection. In his final speech to the state legislature in January 1866 he outlined his vision of how Reconstruction should proceed, significantly diverging from the Radical agenda by not making black suffrage a prerequisite for the readmission of rebel state legislators to Congress. He had in part acted on private efforts to aid in the reconstruction of the south in 1865, forming a land agency as a clearing house for Northerners seeking to invest in the southern properties. Andrew was elected a 3rd Class Companion (honorary member) of the Pennsylvania Commandery of the
Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States in recognition of his support of the Union during the Civil War.
Domestic Massachusetts issues Andrew was elected with support from a large and primarily populist base. He was not part of Boston's relatively conservative aristocracy, whose support he needed to govern, especially in managing the war effort. Many of his military advisors and aides were drawn from Boston's elites, which caused some discontent among his populist supporters. Construction of the Hoosac Tunnel was a significant issue within the state during Andrew's tenure. The state had loaned its builder, the
Troy and Greenfield Railroad, $2 million in the 1850s to support the construction. In 1861, both outgoing Governor Banks, and Andrew, after he took office, refused to sign a bill authorizing additional funding to the financially troubled project. Andrew lacked confidence in
Herman Haupt, the tunnel's chief engineer, and withdrew the state engineer overseeing the project. These actions cost Andrew votes in the 1861 election in the towns on the railroad route, but not enough to cost him the election. The state took over the tunnel project in 1862, and it was finally completed at great expense in 1875. Andrew also deliberately snubbed the sentiments of the anti-Catholic Know Nothings by signing the charter for the
College of the Holy Cross, a Catholic college in
Worcester, and subsequently attending its first commencement exercises. In support of the war effort, he rescinded a ban, enacted by the Know Nothing Governor
Henry J. Gardner, against the formation of militia companies composed of immigrants. This made possible the formation of state units populated mainly by German and Irish immigrants. On July 14, 1863, in response to a draft riot that broke out among Irish Catholics in the
North End of
Boston, Andrew ordered six
companies and additional
regular troops to protect Union armories in the neighborhood from attempts by the rioters to raid them. Reform elements within the Republican establishment pressed Andrew for enforcement of the state's alcohol prohibition law, which had been passed in 1855, and which had been poorly enforced, particularly in Boston. In response, legislation was enacted in 1865 and signed by Andrew creating a statewide constabulary, now the Massachusetts State Police; it was the first police force of its kind in the nation. Andrew was not a supporter of prohibition, and did little to enforce the law; his fondness of alcohol was well known. ==Post-war career==