Brown and his family were highly popular in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Republican Committee published his speeches and testimony on Brown's behalf in a pamphlet to distribute to voters. Andrew's popularity made him the choice to head the Massachusetts delegation to the 1860 Republican National Convention. He was nominated for governor at the state convention that year, despite an attempt by the more moderate Governor Banks to secure the nomination for Henry L. Dawes. Banks sought to put off the announcement of his retirement until the last possible moment, but state Republican chairman William Claflin leaked the news to Andrew supporters. Andrew won the nomination by a wide margin, and defeated Constitutional Union Party candidate Amos A. Lawrence in the general election. War Governor of Massachusetts 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