Bonaparte, Charles Joseph

Related Category: U.S. History: Biographies

1851–1921, U.S. cabinet official, b. Baltimore; grandson of Jérôme Bonaparte and Elizabeth Patterson. A lawyer and political leader in Baltimore, he identified himself with reform causes. President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him one of the commissioners to investigate conditions in the Indian Territory and in 1905 appointed him Secretary of the Navy. In Dec., 1906, he shifted from this office to that of Attorney General, which he retained until the end of Roosevelt's administration. He was active in suits brought against the trusts and was largely responsible for breaking up the tobacco monopoly. He was one of the founders, and for a time the president, of the National Municipal League.