Andrew rose slowly at the bar. To his clients he simply did his duty,
and that was all. He was not a learned lawyer, nor was he in any sense a
great lawyer, and yet he expended great care and industry in looking up
his cases, and probably never lost a client who had once employed him.
We are told by one of his biographers that, "during all these years he
was not what was called a student, but was never idle." He entered
largely into the moral questions of that day; was greatly interested in
the preaching of James Freeman Clarke; a constant attendant at meeting
and the Bible-classes. Occasional lay-preaching being the custom of that
church, young Andrew sometimes occupied the pulpit and conducted the
services to the general acceptance of the people.
Andrew did not become actively interested in politics until his
admission to the bar, and then he joined the Whig party, and became
thoroughly in earnest in advocating the Anti-Slavery movement. In 1859
he was chosen to the lower branch of the Legislature and at once took a
prominent position. In 1860 he was nominated for Governor of the
Commonwealth, by a general popular impulse which overwhelmed the old
political managers, who regarded him as an intruder upon the arena, and
had laid other plans. He was called to the position of chief magistrate
of Massachusetts at a most momentous time, but he was found equal to the
emergency, and early acquired, by general consent, the title of "The
Great War-Governor.
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