Ron Chernow is a master of the deft character sketch.  Here’s his description of Ulysses S. Grant’s Attorney General:

He turned to Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, a bespectacled Republican with a grizzled beard, who was born in Concord, Massachusetts . . . .  A former member of the Free-Soil Party, an upright gentleman of starchy integrity, he had served on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court where he used sarcasm to savage lesser mortals. “When on the bench,” wrote an observer, “he was said to be unhappy because he could not decide against both litigants.

Heh.  I feel like I know the guy.