Attorney General: Reverdy Johnson
Reverdy Johnson was born in Annapolis, Maryland, on May 21, 1796. He graduated from St. John’s College in Annapolis in 1811, read law with his father, and was admitted to the bar in 1815. He served briefly as a private in the War of 1812. Johnson practiced law in Prince George’s County then relocated to Baltimore in 1817. He served in the Maryland Senate from 1821 to 1829. In 1845, Johnson was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served until 1849.
Johnson was appointed Attorney General of the United States by President Zachary Taylor on March 8, 1849. He resigned in July 1850 when Millard Fillmore became President. In early 1861, he was a member of the Washington Peace Conference. Johnson served briefly in the Maryland House of Delegates in 1861 before being reelected to the U.S. Senate in 1862. He was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the United Kingdom on June 12, 1868, in which capacity he served until May 13, 1869. Johnson died in Annapolis, Maryland, on February 10, 1876.
Born in western New York in 1814, John Mix Stanley became a portrait and landscape painter that specialized in scenes of Native American life. He deposited his "Indian Gallery" of 152 paintings with the federal government, intending to sell them, in 1852. While the U.S. Congress declined to purchase his canvases, they remained in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., for several years. Much of his collection was destroyed by a fire at the Smithsonian in 1865. Stanley's portrait of Attorney General Johnson was painted in 1856. Stanley died in 1872.