He was born February 28, 1853, in
Prussia. His father, Friedrich Wilhelm Lehmann, emigrated to
Cincinnati, Ohio, when Frederick was two, where he ruled the family with an iron hand. His mother Sophia died young. At age 10, Frederick ran away from home. As a vagabond, selling newspapers, working on farms, and herding sheep, he wandered across the
Midwest, rarely going to school. In his teens, at the urging of his fellow sheep men, he took the stump for presidential candidate
Horace Greeley and gave his first political speech. At 17, he worked as a farm-hand for Judge Epenetus Sears of
Tabor, Iowa. Sears was impressed with the boy's ability and sent him to the local
Tabor College, where he graduated in 1873. After
reading law in his benefactor's office, Lehmann practiced in Tabor,
Sidney, Iowa,
Nebraska City, Nebraska, and
Des Moines, Iowa. He married Nora Stark of
Indianola on December 23, 1879, and he represented the
Wabash Railroad. A noted
orator, he was active in
Iowa politics, including the election of Governor
Horace Boies. In 1890, he moved with his family to
St. Louis, Missouri, and continued to represent the Wabash while building a general law practice. In 1908, he was elected president of the
American Bar Association and served twice. President
William Howard Taft named Lehmann as
United States Solicitor General in 1910. In the
Supreme Court of the United States Lehmann established the right to
tax corporation incomes. He considered national bank affiliates to be illegal. About Lehmann's
oral arguments, Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. told
Felix Frankfurter that Lehmann was so persuasive "I don't dare decide against Lehmann. You feel as though you're ruling against God." In 1912, he returned to practice law in St. Louis with his sons. In 1914, however, he and Justice
Joseph Rucker Lamar represented the United States at the
ABC Powers Conference in which
Argentina,
Brazil, and
Chile mediated between the
United States and
Mexico on the
Veracruz Incident. Cases in his private practice established the right of the
Associated Press to
news as
intellectual property, he secured the Telephone Company's right to valuation on reproduction cost less
depreciation, and he preserved
the Coca-Cola Company's right to use
"Coca" against a claim that it was
fraudulent since actual
cocaine had been removed from the drink formula. In 1918, he became counsel for the
Railway Wage Commission. He supported the forced separation of
investment banks,
commercial banks and
brokerages (a policy later implemented in the
Glass–Steagall Act of 1933), quoting "No man can serve two masters" from
Matthew 6:2, which alluded to an inherent
conflict of interest where investment banks promote the sale of investments, even risky ones, but commercial banks have a duty to avoid risky investments. Lehmann also vigorously opposed
Prohibition. Representing the U. S. government in the Supreme Court, he would "
confess error", a practice in which the Solicitor General admits that the government has been wrong all along and just drops the case even when supported by a lower court's prior decision. Inscribed in the office rotunda of the
Attorney General is Lehmann's famous saying, when a judge had remarked that he seemed to be supporting the opposing side: "The United States wins its point whenever justice is done its citizens in the courts." Frederick Lehmann always refused to run for public office, especially at a party convention of the breakaway
Gold Democrats (opposed to the
Free Silver candidate
William Jennings Bryan) in St. Louis which he chaired (being foreign-born, he could not run for President anyway), and he declined judgeships. In politics he was generally a Democrat, if sometimes a Gold Democrat. In 1909 he drafted the charter by which the City of
St. Louis is still run today. He was a founder of the
Saint Louis Art Museum and the
State Historical Society of Missouri, president of the
St. Louis Public Library, and a director of the St. Louis World's Fair (
Louisiana Purchase Exposition) of 1904, at which he was host of the Universal Congress of Jurists and Lawyers. He was a
bibliophile and he collected rare first editions of
Charles Dickens,
Robert Burns and others, and artworks of
Aubrey Beardsley,
George Cruikshank and
Thomas Rowlandson. He and industrialist
William K. Bixby started the Burns Society; he was twice president of the University Club of
St. Louis. Furthermore, he had a remarkable (possibly
eidetic) memory—when writer
Henry James visited his house, Lehmann could recite whole works that James himself had written but forgotten. For most his life Lehmann was in demand as a public speaker, which he thoroughly enjoyed. His published works included:
John Marshall (1901),
The Lawyer in American History (1906),
Abraham Lincoln (1908),
Conservatism in Legal Procedure (1909),
Prohibition (1910), and
The Law and the Newspaper (1917). In old age he auctioned off his rare book collections. He died September 12, 1931, aged 78, survived by his wife and three sons, lawyers Sears Lehmann, Frederick W. Lehmann Jr., and John Stark Lehmann. He was buried in
Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis. ==Legacy==