William H. Miller (1889–1893)

William H. Miller (1889–1893)

William Henry Harrison Miller was born in 1840 in Augusta, New York. He graduated from Hamilton College, taught in Ohio, and joined the Eighty-Fourth Ohio Infantry in 1862; he never did see action the Civil War.

Following his military service, Miller studied law and was admitted to the Indiana bar in 1865. He then established his own law practice but was soon asked by former Civil War general Benjamin Harrison to join his law firm. When Harrison was elected President of the United States in 1888, he tapped his law partner to become his attorney general. During Miller’s tenure at the Justice Department (1889-1893), he used the newly passed Sherman Antitrust Act to pressure the sugar interests, became one of the first “trust-busters” in the process.

Following his time in the Harrison administration, Miller returned to Indiana, resumed his legal career, and practiced until 1910. William Henry Harrison Miller died in 1917.