Amos Tappan Akerman served as U.S. attorney general from 1870 to 1872, under President Ulysses S. Grant. Although Akerman had supported the Confederate government during the Civil War, as attorney general he was an outspoken advocate for federal civil rights laws that would attack the influence of the Ku Klux Klan in the South and provide civil and criminal penalties for lawbreakers.

Akerman was born on February 23, 1821, in New Hampshire. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1842. Akerman was admitted to the New Hampshire bar that same year but moved to Elberson, Georgia in 1850 to start a private law practice. By the start of the Civil War in 1861, Akerman had become very successful. He supported Georgia's secession from the Union and served the Confederate government in the quartermaster's department during the war. Despite this background, Akerman shifted his allegiance to the Republican Party and embraced...