Background
Amos Tappan Akerman was born on February 23, 1821 at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, United States. He was the son of Benjamin Akerman, a land surveyor, and Olive (Meloon) Akerman.
Amos Tappan Akerman was born on February 23, 1821 at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, United States. He was the son of Benjamin Akerman, a land surveyor, and Olive (Meloon) Akerman.
Akerman attended Phillips Exeter Academy, and graduated from Dartmouth in 1842. Shortly thereafter he went to Georgia, at first teaching school near Augusta. Later he studied law under Berrien.
In 1846 Akerman was engaged by Honorary John McPherson Berrien of Savannah as tutor of the latter's children. While thus employed, he studied law, and was licensed to practice at Clarksville. Soon thereafter he located at Elberton, practicing in partnership with Robert Hester.
Though opposed to the wisdom of secession, he followed his state into the Confederacy, serving first in the brigade under General Robert Toombs, and later in the quartermaster's department. In thus aligning himself with the new government, he did that which almost every son of the North did who at the time was a resident of the South.
Akerman's most valuable service to his adopted state was as a member of the state constitutional convention of 1868. It was held at a time when the greater part of the intelligence and character of the state was disfranchised by the federal authorities; fully a third of its membership was composed of ignorant Negro ex-slaves, and nearly all of the others were mere adventurers--"carpet-baggers"--from the North who had drifted into the state following the close of hostilities. Fortunately there was a small minority of men of high character who acted as a check upon this irresponsible majority, and to Akerman and a few others like him was due the fact that the constitution was not more radical than it was.
In 1869, he was appointed United States district attorney, and the Senate confirmed the appointment, but as he refused to take the test oath, his disabilities had to be removed by Congress before he would assume the office.
In July 1870 President Grant appointed him attorney general of the United States. Having become attorney general shortly after the creation of the new Justice Department, Akerman started to deal with legal issues from the Department of the Interior, such as the question of whether competing railroad companies deserved more land in the West in return for expanding the country's transportation system. He also led enforcement efforts to suppress the Ku Klux Klan in the South through litigation.
Under certain bounties granted by Congress in 1862 and 1864 to certain trans-continental railways, one or more of these roads attempted to obtain large amounts of additional lands. The Secretary of the Interior, Columbus Delano, referred the matter to the Attorney General. He denied the right, and advised the Secretary to reject the claim. He was asked by the Secretary to reconsider the question, and did so, with the result that he became more convinced than ever that the claim of the railroads was illegal. The railroad magnates, Gould and Huntington, began a campaign against the Attorney General, and put heavy pressure on the President to remove him. Delano owned the Baltimore American, and that organ "opened fire" on Akerman. Finally, the President was persuaded to ask for his resignation, doing so in a letter dated December 13, 1871, marking it "Confidential. " Akerman resigned, and George H. Williams of Oregon, friendly to the Pacific railroad companies, was appointed to succeed him. Declining the sops offered by the President, Akerman retired to private life. He moved to Cartersville, Georgia, about 1870, and continued actively in the practice of the law until his death ten years later.
Akerman was the only ex-Confederate to rise to a Cabinet-level position as the United States Attorney General during the post-Civil War Reconstruction period, and became an outspoken attorney advocate for freedmen's civil rights in Georgia. He was well-known for establishing an investigative agency, which eventually became the Federal Bureau of Investigations, and vigorous prosecution of members of the Ku Klux Klan.
In early life an old-line Whig and a Union man, Akerman's political convictions made him a Republican during the political readjustments following the struggle, and he remained a firm adherent of that party.
Akerman was married to Martha Rebecca, the daughter of Reverend Samuel Galloway, a native of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. They had seven children.
