He was a member of the Committee of Fifteen which reported the
Fourteenth Amendment, and while serving on the committee on the
judiciary he reported and carried through the House the Fifteenth
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
In 1873 Mr. Boutwell was chosen United States Senator from
Massachusetts to fill the unexpired term of Hon. Henry Wilson, who had
been elected Vice-President. He continued in the Senate until 1877,
when he was appointed by President Hayes, through Gen. Charles Devens,
then Attorney-General, commissioner to revise the statutes of the
United States. That great work was completed and the volume was
published in the autumn of 1878. Some idea of the labor involved in
this undertaking may be gained from the index, which contains over
25,000 references. In 1878 Mr. Boutwell returned to Boston and resumed
the practice of law. In 1880 William M. Evarts, then Secretary of
State, and President Hayes, asked him to accept the position of counsel
and agent for the United States before a Board of International
Arbitrators created by a treaty ratified in June, 1880, between the
United States and France, for the settlement of claims against each
government by citizens of the other government. The claims of French
citizens, 726 in number, arose from the operations of the Union armies
in the South, principally in and around New Orleans, during the Civil
War, and the consideration of them occupied four years.
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