DEVENS, CHARLES (182o-1891), American lawyer and jurist, was born in Charlestown, Mass., April 4, 182o. He graduated at Harvard college in 1838, and at the Harvard law school in 184o, and was admitted to the bar. Throughout the Civil War he served in the Federal Army, becoming colonel of volun teers in July 186i and brigadier-general of volunteers in April 1862. After the war he was a judge of the Massachusetts superior court from 1867 to 1873, and was an associate justice of the supreme court of the State from 1873 to 1877, and again from 1881 to 1891. From 1877 to 1881 he was attorney-general of the United States in the Cabinet of President Hayes. He died at Boston, Mass., Jan. 7, 1891.
See his Orations and Addresses, with a memoir by John Codman Ropes (Boston, 189i).