He was a delegate at large from New Hampshire to the national conventions at which Henry Clay, Zachary Taylor, and Winfield Scott were nominated by the Whigs for the presidency, serving as vice-president of the first two bodies.

Goodwin supported a legislative resolution opposing the extension of slavery, and an anti-immigrant act aimed at the defining of police courts' powers to suppress "intemperance."

Goodwin's business interests were heavily interlinked with raw materials, such as cotton, produced by slaves in the Southern States and elsewhere.

[3] In May 1861, as the Civil War began, Goodwin responded to the first calls for soldiers by borrowing funds against his own name to equip two regiments.

[4] In 1888, a zinc monument to New Hampshire soldiers and sailors who served in the Civil War was dedicated in a new park.