The Green Bag.
ATTORNEY-GENERAL MILLER.
THE office of Attorney-General of the United States is one of the most important and responsible to which a lawyer can be called. He it is who represents the Government both as prosecutor and defender in all suits in which it may become involved, and it is he, as well, who is called upon for opinions upon all questions involving points of law which may arise in any of the Departments. He is also the President's legal adviser. The office, therefore, it will be seen, is no sinecure, but is one demanding unremitting personal application and requiring the very highest legal attainments for the successful performance of its duties.
We take pleasure in presenting to our readers an excellent portrait and a brief sketch of the present incumbent of this important office.
William Henry Harrison Miller, the present Attorney-General of the United States, was born at Augusta, Oneida County, in the State of New York, Sept. 6, 1840. His father was a farmer, and, like most farmers at that time was possessed of very moderate means. Young Miller's youth was spent upon his father's farm, and his early education was obtained at the district school, which he attended during the winter months when his services were not required by his father.
Notwithstanding the disadvantages under which he labored, he developed a love for study which enabled him to surmount all these difficulties, and before he had reached the age of seventeen, he had fitted himself for, and entered, Hamilton College. During his college course he still continued to work on his father's farm, and it was not until after his graduation that he gave up this agricultural pursuit.
Upon leaving college he went to Maumee City, Ohio, where he became the principal of the school in that place, and taught there until May, 1862, when he entered the army as a lieutenant in the Eighty-fourth Ohio Regiment. After serving in Western Virginia and Maryland, he left the service, and in October, 1862, went to Toledo, where he entered the law office of the late Chief-Justice Waite, as a student.
Having been offered the position of Superintendent of Schools in Peru, Indiana, Mr. Miller left Toledo and went to Peru, where he remained until 1865. During this time he devoted all the spare moments allowed by his official duties to the study of the law. In the spring of 1866 he commenced the practice of his profession in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he remained for eight years, building up, by his untiring devotion and industry, an excellent practice. In 1874 he removed to Indianapolis, and became a partner of General, now President, Benjamin Harrison and Judge C. C. Hines. After that time he continued to reside in Indianapolis until last spring, when he was appointed by President Harrison Attorney-General of the United States.
Up to the time of his appointment Mr. Miller had held but one office,—that of Superintendent of Schools in Peru, Indiana.
