Attorney General: Isaac W. MacVeagh
Isaac Wayne MacVeagh was born in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, on April 19, 1833. He attended Freeland Seminary (later Ursinus College) before entering the junior class at Yale College, graduating in 1853. He was admitted to the bar in 1856 and began practicing law in West Chester, Pennsylvania. During the Civil War, MacVeagh served as a captain in an emergency infantry regiment of the Union Army, ultimately becoming a major in the cavalry in 1863. That same year he served as chairman of the Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania. MacVeagh was appointed U.S. Minister to Turkey on June 4, 1870, by President Ulysses S. Grant. He served in that post until June 10, 1871.
On March 5, 1881, President James A. Garfield appointed MacVeagh as Attorney General of the United States. He was continued under President Chester A. Arthur’s administration but resigned on October 24, 1881. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him Chief Counsel for the United States and Venezuela in an arbitration before the Hague Court. MacVeagh died on January 11, 1917, in Washington, D.C.
Albrecht Bernhard Uhle was born in Chemnitz, Saxony, and was brought to the United States by his parents in 1851. He received his first instruction in art from his father, attended the Pennsylvania Academy at the age of 15, and studied the Old Masters in Munich and Paris. He became interested in photography and devoted the years between 1867 and 1875 to this new medium. In 1877, Uhle opened a studio in Philadelphia and was constantly employed in painting portraits. Uhle's portrait of Attorney General MacVeagh was painted in 1884. Uhle died in 1930.