Michener also served on the staff of President Benjamin Harrison as both a campaign manager and political adviser.
William Michener, a native of Ohio who came to Indiana as a child, was descended from a Quaker family from Washington County, Pennsylvania.
[1][3] Michener attended common schools in Fayette County and was a student at Brookville College for a year.
Michener served two full terms as Attorney General and was succeeded to the office by Alonzo G. Smith.
Michener, along with Henry Cabot Lodge and presidential secretary Elijah W. Halford, successfully convinced President Harrison to appoint Roosevelt to the United States Civil Service Commission in 1889.
In 1904, Michener wrote a letter to James S. Clarkson promoting the Republican ticket of Theodore Roosevelt and Charles W. Fairbanks in the 1904 presidential election, stating that opposition to Roosevelt and Fairbanks came primarily from Southern Democrats who wished to preserve Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised African Americans.