Attorney General: Isaac Toucey
Isaac Toucey was born in Newtown, Connecticut, on November 5, 1796. He received a classical education, read law with Asa Chapman, and was admitted to the bar in 1818. Toucey initially practiced law in Hartford, Connecticut. He served from 1822 to 1835 as the state’s attorney for Hartford County. From 1835 to 1839, he was a U.S. Representative in Congress from Connecticut, was reappointed state’s attorney in 1842 and served until 1844, and was the Governor of Connecticut from 1846 to 1847.
On June 21, 1848, President James K. Polk appointed Toucey as Attorney General of the United States. Toucey held that office until March 3, 1849. Returning to Hartford, he served in both houses of the Connecticut legislature before being elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served from 1852 to 1857. In March 1857, he became Secretary of the Navy and served until 1861. Toucey died in Hartford on July 30, 1869.
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 Toucey was painted in 1857. Stanley died in 1872.