Bibliography
See biography by B. C. Steiner (1914, repr. 1970).
Reverdy Johnson
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Reverdy Johnson |
Johnson, Reverdy, 1796-1876, American lawyer and statesman, b. Annapolis, Md. Admitted to the bar in 1816, he served in the Maryland legislature (1821-28) and the U.S. Senate (1845-49) and was attorney general under President Taylor. Johnson won a reputation as one of the ablest constitutional lawyers of the period. His constitutional argument as counsel for the defense in the Dred Scott Case is known to have greatly influenced the Supreme Court, particularly Chief Justice Roger Taney. A Whig and then a conservative Democrat, Johnson was sympathetic with the South but was absolutely opposed to secession and used his influence to keep Maryland in the Union. He played an important role in the unsuccessful defense of Mary E. Surratt, alleged accomplice of John Wilkes Booth. In his second term in the U.S. Senate (1863-68), he supported President Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction program, and his opposition to the impeachment of Johnson influenced other senators in voting for the President's acquittal. In 1868 he was appointed minister to Great Britain, where he negotiated the Johnson-Clarendon Treaty to settle the Alabama claims; the treaty was rejected by the U.S. Senate largely for party reasons, and Johnson was recalled in 1869.
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| Legal Encyclopedia: Johnson, Reverdy |
Reverdy Johnson served as U.S. attorney general from 1849 to 1850. Johnson also served in the U.S. Senate and was an influential constitutional lawyer. He represented the defense in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 (19 How.) U.S. 393, 15 L. Ed. 691 (1857).
Johnson was born May 21, 1796, in Annapolis, Maryland. He graduated from St. John's College, in Annapolis, in 1811 and was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1815. After establishing a law practice in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, Johnson relocated to Baltimore in 1817 and opened a new firm that specialized in constitutional law.
After his relocation Johnson became interested in politics and government service. He was deputy attorney general of Maryland before being elected to the Maryland Senate in 1821. In 1845 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, then resigned in 1849 to serve as U.S. attorney general in the administration of President Zachary Taylor.
Johnson's talents in constitutional law were demonstrated in the Dred Scott case. Dred Scott was an African American slave from Missouri who had been transported to Minnesota, then a "free" (non-slaveholding) territory. Scott sued for his freedom, arguing that he was no longer a slave because he had resided in a free territory. Missouri law had established the principle "once free, always free." John F.A. Sandford, who controlled Scott, objected to the trial court's declaration that Scott was free. The Missouri Supreme Court agreed with Sandford and overturned the once-free, always-free doctrine. Scott appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
When the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, Scott's lawyer framed it as a suit for Scott's freedom. Johnson, one of several lawyers representing Sandford, injected into the proceeding several new issues that transformed the case into a debate over the constitutionality of slavery. Johnson argued that Scott had no right to sue in federal court, raising the issue of a black person's claim to be a U.S. citizen. Johnson also attacked the constitutionality of the 1820 Missouri Compromise, which gave Congress the power to forbid slavery in the territories. Johnson claimed that slaves were private property protected by the Constitution, and therefore Congress could not abolish slavery in the territories. These arguments transformed the issue from whether Scott could be returned to slavery to whether Scott had ever been free at all.
The Supreme Court adopted most of Johnson's arguments. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's majority opinion concluded that at the time of the ratification of the Constitution, there were no African American citizens in the United States. Therefore, the Framers never contemplated that African Americans could be federal citizens. In practical terms Scott's lack of citizenship meant he could not sue in federal court. In addition, the Court ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.
The Dred Scott case helped precipitate the secession of southern states and the Civil War, yet Johnson supported the Union during the war. He waged a successful campaign to prevent Maryland from seceding, before returning to the U.S. Senate in 1861.
After the Civil War, Johnson was the lone Democratic member of the U.S. Senate to support the ideas of the Radical Republicans' Reconstruction policy. He was a member of the Reconstruction committee and of a joint congressional committee that looked into these issues.
In 1868, as a member of the Senate Rules Committee, Johnson participated in impeachment proceedings against President Andrew Johnson. He was strongly in favor of a verdict of acquittal, which occurred by the slimmest of margins.
Johnson entered the foreign service in 1868 as a minister to Great Britain. In 1869 he returned to his law practice. He spent much of his later years defending southerners charged with disloyalty to the federal government. He successfully argued that the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to illegal acts committed by the government, not to acts committed by private citizens, including vigilantes.
Johnson died February 10, 1876, in Annapolis, Maryland.
| Wikipedia: Reverdy Johnson |
| Reverdy Johnson | |
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| In office March 8, 1849 – July 21, 1850 |
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| Preceded by | Isaac Toucey |
| Succeeded by | John J. Crittenden |
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| Born | May 21, 1796 Annapolis, Maryland, U.S. |
| Died | February 10, 1876 (aged 79) Annapolis, Maryland, U.S. |
| Political party | Whig, Democrat |
| Spouse(s) | Mary M. Johnson |
| Alma mater | St. John's College |
| Profession | Lawyer, Politician |
Reverdy Johnson (May 21, 1796 – February 10, 1876) was a statesman and jurist from Maryland.
Contents |
Early life
Born in Annapolis, Johnson was the son of a distinguished Maryland lawyer and politician, John Johnson (1770 - 1824). He graduated from St. John's College in 1812 and then studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1815, and then moved to Baltimore, where he became a legal colleague of Luther Martin, William Pinkney and Roger B. Taney. From 1821 until 1825 he served in the Maryland State Senate and then returned to practice law for two decades.
Federal politics
From 1845 to 1849, he represented Maryland in the United States Senate as a Whig, and from March 1849 until July 1850 he was Attorney General of the United States under President Zachary Taylor. He resigned that position when Millard Fillmore took office.
A conservative Democrat, he supported Stephen A. Douglas in the presidential election of 1856. He represented the slave-owning defendant in the famous 1857 case Dred Scott v. Sandford. He was personally opposed to slavery and was a key figure in the effort to keep Maryland from seceding from the Union during the American Civil War.
He served as a Maryland delegate to the Peace Convention of 1861 and from 1861 to 1862 served in the Maryland House of Delegates. During this time he represented Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter at his court-martial, arguing that Porter's distinguished record of service ought to put him beyond question. The officers on the court-martial, all handpicked by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, voted to convict Porter of cowardice and disobedience.
After the capture of New Orleans, he was commissioned by President Abraham Lincoln to revise the decisions of the military commandant, General Benjamin F. Butler, in regard to foreign governments, and reversed all those decisions to the entire satisfaction of the administration. After the war, reflecting the diverse points of view held by his fellow statesmen, Johnson argued for a gentler Reconstruction effort than that advocated by the Radical Republicans.
In 1863 he again took a seat in the United States Senate, serving through 1868. In 1865, he defended Mary Surratt before a military tribunal. Surratt was convicted and executed for plotting and aiding Lincoln's assassination. In 1866, he was a delegate to the National Union Convention which attempted to build support for President Johnson. Senator Johnson's report on the proceedings of the convention was entered into the record of President Johnson's impeachment trial. In 1868 he was appointed minister to the United Kingdom and soon after his arrival in England negotiated the Johnson-Clarendon Treaty for the settlement of disputes arising out of the Civil War; this, however, the Senate refused to ratify, and he returned home on the accession of General Ulysses S. Grant to the presidency. Again resuming his legal practice, he was engaged by the government in the prosecution of cases against the Ku Klux Klan as well as work compiling the reports of the decisions of the Maryland Court of Appeals.
In 1876, he fell from a balcony at the Governor's Mansion in Annapolis and was killed instantly. He is buried in Greenmount Cemetery at Baltimore. Johnson had been the last surviving member of the Taylor Cabinet.
Further reading
- Steiner, Bernard C., Life of Reverdy Johnson, New Library Press.Net. ISBN 0-7950-2452-5
References and external links
- Reverdy Johnson at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- Reverdy Johnson at Find-A-Grave
| United States Senate | ||
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| Preceded by William D. Merrick |
United States Senator (Class 1) from Maryland March 4, 1845 – March 7, 1849 Served alongside: James A. Pearce |
Succeeded by David Stewart |
| Preceded by Anthony Kennedy |
United States Senator (Class 1) from Maryland March 4, 1863 – July 10, 1868 Served alongside: Thomas Holliday Hicks, John A. J. Creswell and George Vickers |
Succeeded by William Pinkney Whyte |
| Legal offices | ||
| Preceded by Isaac Toucey |
United States Attorney General March 8, 1849 – July 21, 1850 |
Succeeded by John J. Crittenden |
| Diplomatic posts | ||
| Preceded by Charles Francis Adams, Sr. |
U.S. Minister to Great Britain 1868 – 1869 |
Succeeded by John Lothrop Motley |
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