Benjamin Harris Brewster was born on October 13, 1816 in Salem County, New Jersey, and thought of himself as descended from William Brewster of Massachusetts Bay. His friendly biographer thought the same, but his name does not appear among the descendants recorded in the history of that family. However this may be, his parents, Francis Enoch and Maria Hampton Brewster, were of old colonial stock with a tradition of education and standing that they transmitted to their son.
Benjamin was a graduate of Princeton College in 1834.
After graduation from Princeton College in 1834, Benjamin Brewster soon thereafter became a leading member of the Philadelphia bar.
In 1846 he held a minor federal post, settling certain affairs of the Cherokee Indians. Through this connection he served as attorney general of Pennsylvania in 1867 and 1868, and was repeatedly discussed in connection with political opportunities that did not arrive.
He came first into national prominence when Attorney-General Wayne MacVeagh invited him in September 1881 to assume with George Bliss of New York the position of special counsel for the government in the Star Route prosecutions.
When MacVeagh retired from the cabinet after the death of Garfield, President Arthur advanced Brewster to the seat thus vacated; and for the remainder of the Arthur administration the Star Route prosecutions formed the largest single duty of the attorney-general's office.
The Star Route frauds, after three years of partial concealment, burst upon the country when, in April 1881, President Garfield removed from office T. J. Brady, the second assistant postmaster-general, after receiving the reports of special investigators upon the management of western mail contracts. Involved with Brady were ex-Senator S. W. Dorsey and others who had for many years carried on an extensive traffic in these contracts.
The case was of high political importance because Dorsey, as secretary of the Republican National Committee in the canvass of 1880, was widely credited with having carried the State of Indiana by the use of money.
Efforts were made to frighten Garfield from the prosecutions, but in vain. After Garfield was shot, action in the matter halted until his death; immediately after which MacVeagh pressed the cases, with the approval of President Arthur, and brought Brewster into them. There was a long and futile struggle for convictions.
Robert G. Ingersoll, chief counsel for the various defendants, was at the top of his power as a lawyer, and convictions could not be secured. There was no doubt however that scandalous mismanagement had crept into the Post Office Department; and that the profits of successful crime had been widely distributed among party workers. The failure to procure convictions was a burden upon Arthur's candidacy to secure renomination in 1884, and upon Brewster.
Brewster retired into private life with President Arthur in 1885, and died in Philadelphia three years later. He died on April 4, 1888, at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he is buried in Woodlands Cemetery.
Benjamin Brewster achieved success in his career right from the start becoming a leading member of the Philadelphia bar. Brewster had an oratorical gift, and was much in demand for ceremonial addresses. Then from 1846 he held some federal posts focusing on settling certain affairs of the Cherokee Indians. The turning point of his career came in 1881, when President Chester A. Arthur, appointed him as an Attorney General of the United States. Brewster's service in this capacity was signified by his ventures as a chief prosecutor in the case of the United States Postal Service's Star Route Frauds. He held the office until the accession of President Grover Cleveland, in 1885.
Originally a Democrat, Brewster joined the Republicans and was thereafter associated in Pennsylvania politics with Simon Cameron.
Brewster cultivated in private a taste for ecclesiastical history. His fastidious social habits and his private means helped to give to the President Arthur administration its reputation for social activity, in sharp contrast to that of the administrations immediately preceding 1881.
Benjamin Brewster was ever a marked man. In infancy he was cruelly burned about his face, so that the scars gave him a wizened and drawn appearance; he called attention to this by assuming the costume of a fop of the later thirties and continuing the same dress throughout his life. Meticulous in costume, antique in appearance, with high stock and ruffles, he was a tradition from his early life; and his great abilities were advertised by his peculiarities.
Benjamin Brewster was twice married; in 1857 to Elizabeth von Myerbach de Reinfeldts who died in 1868, and in 1870 to Mary Walker, daughter of Robert J. Walker, who survived him. By the second marriage he had a son, born in 1872.
