Hugh
McCulloch
was born in Kennebunk, Maine, in 1808. After attending Bowdoin College
he studied law in Boston. In 1833 he moved to Fort Wayne, and two
years later became the branch manager of the Bank of the State of
Indiana. After twenty years as a manager at Fort Wayne he was appointed
president of the parent bank in Indianapolis.
McCulloch was for many years a member of the Whig
Party. An opponent of slavery, McCulloch
joined the Republican Party in 1854.
However, McCulloch held racist views and openly told people that he
believed whites "were the superior race in intelligence and energy"
and deserved to be the "dominant race".
In 1863 Salmon Chase, Secretary of the
Treasury, appointed McCulloch as Comptroller of the Currency. When
William Fessenden resigned as Secretary
of the Treasury in March, 1865, Abraham Lincoln
invited McCulloch to take his place. After Lincoln's assassination
McCulloch loyally supported President Andrew
Johnson. McCulloch claimed at the time that his relations with
Johnson were "cordial and intimate, rather more so I think than
they would have been with Mr. Lincoln."
McCulloch left office when Ulysses S. Grant
became president in March, 1869. Soon afterwards he became a partner
in a London banking house. Hugh McCulloch
died in Maryland in 1895.
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