Wayne MacVeagh

Isaac Wayne MacVeagh (April 19, 1833 – January 11, 1917) was an American lawyer, politician and diplomat. He served as the 36th Attorney General of the United States under the administrations of Presidents James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur.

MacVeagh was born in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, on April 19, 1833, the son of Major John MacVeagh and Margaret (née Lincoln) MacVeagh. His brother, Franklin MacVeagh, was a banker and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under President William Howard Taft.

He attended Yale University, where he was a brother of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Phi chapter), and graduated tenth in his class in 1853. He was admitted to the bar in 1856, and was the District Attorney of Chester County, Pennsylvania, from 1859 through 1864. He led the militia forces organized to battle back the threatened Confederate invaders from 1862 to 1863, and served in the Union Army during the American Civil War as an infantry captain and as a major in the cavalry.

He became a leader in the Republican Party and was the prominent opponent of his father-in-law, Simon Cameron, in the fight within the party in 1871. MacVeagh was the Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1870 through 1871, and was a member of the state constitutional convention of 1872 and 1873.

In 1875, MacVeagh co-founded the Philadelphia-based law firm known today as Dechert LLP. He also served as Chairman of the MacVeagh Commission, sent in 1877 by President Rutherford B. Hayes to Louisiana, which secured the settlement of the contest between two existing state governments and thus made possible the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the state.

MacVeagh served as the 36th Attorney General in 1881 under President James A. Garfield. He resigned after President Garfield's assassination. Chester Arthur was to be 21st President and MacVeagh served as a cabinet member.

In 1892, he supported Grover Cleveland, the Democratic nominee for the presidency, and from 1893 to 1897 he served as Ambassador to Italy. He returned to the Republican Party in 1896. In 1903, he was an chief counsel of the United States before the Hague tribunal in the case regarding the claims of Germany, Britain and Italy against the republic of Venezuela.

MacVeagh married Letitia Miner Lewis, in 1856. They had one son, Charles MacVeagh (June 6, 1860 – December 4, 1931), who became the Ambassador to Japan.

In 1866, after his first wife's death, he married the former Virginia Rolette Cameron, a daughter of U.S. Secretary of War Simon Cameron.

MacVeagh died in Washington, D.C., on January 11, 1917. He was buried at the Church of the Redeemer Cemetery in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.