Amos T. Akerman
United States Attorney General (1821-1880)
Amos Tappan Akerman (February 23, 1821 – December 21, 1880) was an American politician who served as United States Attorney General under President Ulysses S. Grant from 1870 to 1871.
A native of New Hampshire, Akerman graduated from Dartmouth College in 1842 and moved South, where he spent most of his career. He first worked as headmaster of a school in North Carolina and as a tutor in Georgia. Having become interested in law, Akerman studied and passed the bar in Georgia in 1850; where he and an associate set up a law practice. He also owned a farm and enslaved eleven people. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Akerman joined the Confederate Army, where he achieved the rank of colonel.
After the end of the war in 1865, Akerman joined the Republican Party during Reconstruction. He became an outspoken attorney advocate for freedmen's civil rights in Georgia. Akerman was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant as his U.S. Attorney General; with Grant's support, he vigorously prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan under the Enforcement Acts. Akerman was assisted by Solicitor General Benjamin Bristow in the newly established Department of Justice.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Amos T. Akerman” is united States Attorney General (1821-1880). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Amos, Akerman and United, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q352125. VIAF identifies the subject as 43555300. The Library of Congress control number is n95102139. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1821, 1880, 1870 and 1871.
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This entry incorporates text from “Amos T. Akerman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.