Attorney General: Charles Devens

Charles Devens was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on April 4, 1820. He graduated from Harvard in 1838 and went on to Harvard Law School. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1840 and practiced from 1841 to 1849 in Franklin County. From 1848 to 1849, Devens served in the state senate, and from 1849 to 1853, he held the post of U.S. Marshal for the District of Massachusetts. In 1854, he returned to private law and served as a city solicitor for Worcester from 1856 to 1858. Devens served during the Civil War as a major in the Third Battalion of Massachusetts Rifles, as a colonel in the 15th Massachusetts Infantry, as a brigadier general and brevet major general, and was wounded at the Battles of Ball’s Bluff, Fair Oaks, and Chancellorsville. Mustered out in 1866, he resumed his legal practice. In April 1867, Devens was appointed justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, and in 1873, he was named to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. 

Devens was appointed Attorney General of the United States by President Rutherford B. Hayes on March 12, 1877. He held that office until March 7, 1881, after which he was reappointed a justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. He died in Boston on January 7, 1891.