Law partner of President Chester Alan Arthur. Benjamin K. Phelps was an American lawyer and politician from New York. Phelps attended Andover Theological Seminary, America's oldest graduate seminary and the nation's first graduate institution of any kind, located in Newton, Massachusetts. He then graduated from Yale College in 1853. He was admitted to the bar in 1855 in Poughkeepsie, New York, after studying law in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, and Westchester County, New York. Phelps then practiced law in New York City, partnered with his Yale classmate Sherman W. Knevals, beginning in 1856. He served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1866 to 1870. He partnered with Chester A. Arthur, who would later become President of the United States, to form the law firm of Arthur, Phelps, Knevals & Ransom, along with his old law partner Knevals, and Rastus S. Ransom, in the year 1872. In November 1872, Phelps was elected on the Republican ticket as New York County District Attorney, and was re-elected in 1875 and 1878, and he remained in office until his death. Benjamin Kinsman Phelps also wrote "Hymns of a Higher Life," a book of English religious poetry and hymns published in 1868. As District Attorney, Phelps was one of three chief prosecutors at the Boss Tweed Trials in 1873, along with Wheeler H. Peckham and Lyman Tremain. William Marcy Tweed's lawyers were David Dudley Field, John Graham, and Elihu Root. The jury found Tweed guilty of 102 crimes on November 19, 1873. Each crime was punishable by a year in prison and a nominal $250 fine, so the prosecutors sought a sentence totaling 102 years and a fine of $25,500. Tweed was sentenced to 12 years in prison and a $12,750 fine. However, Boss Tweed's attorneys appealed to the New York Court of Appeals, which ruled that despite the multiple offenses, Tweed could not be sentenced to more than the punishment which was applicable to just one crime. Therefore, Tweed served just one year in prison, paid his $250 fine, and on January 15, 1875, was released from prison.