Attorney General: Edward Bates
Edward Bates was born in Goochland County, Virginia, on September 4, 1793. He received his education from private tutors and at Charlotte Hall Academy in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. From February until October 1813, he served in the Virginia militia at Norfolk. Bates relocated to the Missouri Territory in 1814, read law under Rufus Easton, and was admitted to the bar in 1816. In 1820, he was elected to the state Constitutional Convention and subsequently appointed the first Attorney General of Missouri. Bates was elected to the state legislature in 1822 and as Missouri’s sole representative in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1826. After serving one congressional term, he served several terms in the state legislature during the 1830s. Bates presided over the 1847 River and Harbor Convention in Chicago, Illinois. In 1850, President Millard Fillmore offered Bates the post of Secretary of War, which he declined. He served as judge of the St. Louis land court from 1853 to 1856 and presided over the Whig National Convention held in Baltimore, Maryland in 1856.
On March 5, 1861, Bates was appointed Attorney General of the United States by President Abraham Lincoln. He resigned that office on November 30, 1864, and returned to St. Louis, Missouri, where he died on March 25, 1869.
Alban Jasper Conant was born in Chelsea, Vermont, in 1821. He became well known for his portraits of leading statesmen while visiting Washington, D.C., in the 1880s. Conant painted several portraits of Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s. He was also an archaeologist, author, and founder of the Western Academy of Art in St. Louis, Missouri. Conant painted Attorney General Bates in 1861. Conant died in 1915.