During his distinguished career of governmental service, Charles Evans Hughes served as secretary of state and two different terms as a justice on the Supreme Court. He also lost a close presidential election in 1916 to Woodrow Wilson. Hughes was born in Glens Falls, New York, on April 14, 1862. He entered Madison University (now Colgate) at the age of fourteen, transferring later to Brown University. Hughes taught school for a year at Delaware Academy in Delhi, New York, and read law in his spare time. In 1882, he entered Cornell Law School, and he graduated in 1884. For the next twenty years, he practiced law, briefly interrupting his work to teach law at Cornell.

At the age of forty-three, Hughes was chosen by a legislative committee to investigate the gas and electric industry in New York. His success in exposing fraud led to other high profile investigations, and...