Charles Devens served as U.S. attorney general from 1877 to 1881 under President Rutherford B. Hayes. During his many years of public service, Devens was a state legislator, a major general in the Civil War and a state supreme court justice.

Devens was born on April 4, 1820, in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard in 1838 and then apprenticed with a Cambridge law firm, which was a common way to prepare for the bar examination. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1841 and remained in private practice in Cambridge until 1849.

Devens became active in politics and public service in the 1840s. He served as a Massachusetts state senator in 1848 and 1849 and then became U.S. marshal for the district of Massachusetts in 1849. Devens left the marshal position in 1853 and returned to private practice. However, by 1856 he had returned to public service as the solicitor for the city of Worcester, Massachusetts...