Pulaski County ArArchives Biographies.....Johnson, Benjamin And Robert Ward 
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 November 30, 2011, 8:49 pm

Source: See Below
Author: John Hallum

JUDGE BENJAMIN JOHNSON AND SON, HON. ROBERT WARD JOHNSON, LITTLE ROCK.

  These honored and distinguished gentlemen are prominent members of a very
distinguished family, both in our local and national history. Written and oral
traditions of the family carry the historian back to early times in the old
colony of Virginia, and there leave him to contemplate the dim, illegible
outlines of the past and forgotten at a period where oblivion closes the gate
and refuses to give up her treasure.

  That they were men of strong individuality and pronounced types of character
is sufficiently attested by their descendants. We find them staunch settlers in
Orange county at an early day, from whence Robert Johnson immigrated in 1779 to
the "dark and bloody ground," and settled in what has since been mapped out as
Scott county. He raised a family of thirteen boys and girls, and gave his
country sons distinguished alike in war and peace. Two of his sons, James and
Richard M. Johnson, were distinguished soldiers in the war of 1812. On the 5th
of October, 1813, at the battle of the Thames, Richard killed that celebrated
Indian warrior Tecumseh. James died whilst serving his first term in congress.
John L. Johnson served two terms in congress and was then elected judge of the
court of appeals of Kentucky, which he subsequently resigned and became one of
the most remarkable ministers of the gospel America has ever produced, preaching
in the service of the Campbellite or Christian church for more than thirty
years, in every section of the Union, without pay. He was learned, eloquent and
profound, and practiced all the virtues of the creed he professed. Richard M.
Johnson was fifteen years a member of the national house of representatives, ten
years a member of the senate of the United States, and four years vice-president
of the United States.

  Two of the sons, Joel and Henry, became distinguished planters in the lower
Mississippi valley. Benjamin Johnson, brother to these celebrated sons of
Kentucky, the subject of this notice, was born in Scott county, Kentucky, the
22d of January, 1784. He was a young man of brilliant promise and expectations -
was universally esteemed for amiability and purity of character. He was admitted
to the bar in the Lexington circuit, where his ability and popularity soon
marked him for the high station of the jurist, to which he was elevated by
election several times before President Monroe in 1821 appointed him to the
territorial bench in Arkansas, an appointment which was renewed through all the
changing and successive administrations until the State in 1836 was admitted
into the Union. When that event transpired General Jackson appointed him judge
of the Federal court for the district of Arkansas, a position he adorned and
honored until his death in 1849. He was universally esteemed and admired, not
only by the bar, but by the whole body of his fellow citizens. He was on the
bench thirty-eight years. One of his daughters married Ambrose H. Sevier, long a
senator in congress. One of his granddaughters is the wife of Governor
Churchill. Robert Ward Johnson, his distinguished son, was born in Scott county,
Kentucky, on the 22d of July, 1814, and came to Arkansas in 1821, with his
father. His academic training was imparted at Indian Academy, near Frankfort,
his collegiate, at St. Joseph's College, Bardstown, where he was graduated in
1833. Leaving Bardstown he entered the law department of Yale, where, at the
expiration of two years, he was graduated bachelor of laws. He returned to
Little Rock in the fall of 1835, where he met a genial companion of high hopes
and promises in the person of Samuel H. Hempstead, with whom he formed a
law-partnership which continued until 1847. In 1840 Governor Yell commissioned
him prosecuting attorney for the circuit embracing Little Rock, which made him
ex-officio attorney-general for the State, a position he resigned two years
afterward.

  During his term of office, Trowbridge, then mayor of Little Rock, was
discovered to be the leader of a band of counterfeiters, and many men of local
prominence were accused of being connected with him. They were indicted by the
grand jury, and prosecuted with fearless ability by Colonel Johnson.    This
trial enhanced his fame as a lawyer, and brought him prominently into public
notice. As we have seen, he is descended from a line who always had strong
moorings in the public heart, and he seems to have been better fitted for the
political than the forensic arena, though possessing great talents for both.

  In 1840 and again in 1842 he was a formidable competitor for the legislature
in the strong whig borough of Pulaski, against such men as Gibson, Trapnall and
Bertrand, the ablest leaders of the opposition, and was defeated only by a few
votes the first, and only one vote the last race. The achievement was remarkable
for one so young against such odds in favor of old veterans. These local
contests extended his fame throughout the State as a party leader, and focalized
the attention of the democratic party on him as a candidate for congress in
1846, and he was elected without opposition in the fall of that year.

  In 1848 he had strong opposition for the nomination in his own party, in the
person of the talented and ambitions Judge W. S. Oldham, an associate justice of
the supreme court of the State, and afterward a senator in the Confederate
congress from Texas, and in 1861 commissioner from the Confederate States to
Arkansas, to win her over to the revolutionary government at Montgomery. This
strong man was overwhelmingly defeated by the well-arranged combinations of Mr.
Johnson in the "great north-west" where Judge Oldham lived.

  This was accomplished by running the always popular Alfred M. Wilson of
Fayetteville as a tender to Colonel Johnson; he rode the old tidal wave of "the
north-west," swept the foundations from under Judge Oldham, and thus secured the
nomination and election of Colonel Johnson. This defeat inspired the removal of
Judge Oldham soon after to Texas. He was reelected in 1850, and declined the
nomination in 1852, desiring to retire from politics, but when Doctor Solon
Borland resigned his seat in the senate of the United States to accept a foreign
mission in 1853, Governor Conway appointed him to the vacancy until the
legislature could in the fall of 1854 fill it by election, and he did not feel
at liberty to decline the exalted station. When the legislature convened he was
unanimously elected, not only to fill the unexpired term, but for the succeeding
term of six years ending March 4, 1861.

  He opposed the compromise measures of Mr. Clay and the repeal of the Missouri
compromise, because underlying these principles he foresaw the coming conflict
between the free and the slave States, and regarded these measures as tending to
precipitate, rather then prevent civil war.

  He was much devoted to the union of the States, as founded in the organic
sanctions and restraints imposed by the fathers, but he did not regard his
loyalty to the government, as administered by a dominant sectional faction,
which made war on, and set at defiance the constitutional guaranties thrown
around the institution of slavery, as of higher obligation than the allegiance
he owed to his native south.

  When he saw the south embarking on the bloody ocean of revolution, founded in
the greatest civil war since Caesar and Pompey fought at Pharsalia for the
mastery of the Roman empire, he embraced the cause of the south.

  He believed in the doctrine of secession, but in the application of the
principle as a dernier resort. In this, in common with many able men of the
south, he followed the disorganizing heresies of that great intellect, John C.
Calhoun, too far. Nullification and secession are twin sisters, and can have no
obligation in our system, unless admitted as elements of destruction; that sort
of energy was never invoked and never incorporated in our federation. No
government can long exist which recognizes the doctrine. Change the term, and
call it revolution, and coming generations will find little to condemn in the
south for resisting the encroachment of a faction, founded in open disregard of
sacred guaranties.

  Mr. Johnson, in 1860, when his successor was chosen, declined to be a
candidate for the senate. He came home from Washington after the inauguration of
President Lincoln, and entered on an active canvass of those sections of the
State where the Union sentiment prevailed, taking strong ground in justification
of the south. When the secession convention re-assembled in May, it elected five
delegates to the provisional government at Montgomery, viz.: R. W. Johnson of
Jefferson county; A. H. Garland and Albert Rush of Pulaski county; H. P.
Thomason of Crawford county; and W. W. Watkins of Carroll county.

  In November, 1862, Mr. Johnson was elected senator to the Confederate
congress, and served in that capacity until the end.

  After the fall of Richmond, he fled to the Brazos in Texas, and from thence
started to Mexico in voluntary exile, rather than submit to the fate he supposed
awaited him if he remained in the United States; but in Galveston he met General
Gordon Granger, of the United States army, an old friend, who extended him every
courtesy, and put him in communication with President Johnson, which resulted in
his going to Washington instead of Mexico. President Johnson gave him
protection, and he returned to his large landed estates in Jefferson county.
Here he struggled heroically for two years to rebuild, and to save something out
of the wreck of his once princely fortune, but failed, and gave up all to his
creditors.

  The practice of his profession now became a necessity, and he met the demand
with the vigor and courage of younger and better days.

  The author knew him well before the war, when he was in the noon-tide of both
financial and political fortune; but Robert W. Johnson never appeared to so much
advantage as when overwhelmed with misfortune. Then it was the nobility of his
nature towered above the wreck around him and exhibited a soul superior to
disaster. In the fall of 1868 he moved to Washington city and entered into
partnership with General Albert Pike This was a happy and successful union,
lasting nine years, after which he resumed his former home in Little Rock.
Congress, in 18TT, by special act, removed his political disabilities. In 1878
he was a candidate for the United States senate, and made an earnest, animated
canvass of the State, but was defeated by a very small majority in favor of his
opponent, the Hon. J. D. Walker of Fayetteville. He died at his residence in
Little Rock on the 26th of July, 1879. He possessed a very sanguine temperament,
and gave way to no obstacle in the pathway of honorable ambition. No man was
more devoted to friends, nor more defiant to enemies. He was a splendid
conversationalist, and never tired in entertaining friends,

  Mr. Johnson married two daughters of Dr. George W. Smith of Louisville,
Kentucky; the last wife and three children by the first survive him - Benjamin
S. Johnson of Little Rock, and Frank S. Johnson of San Francisco, California,
both able lawyers, and Sallie Frances, the wife of John C. Breckenridge, son of
the late Major-General John C. Breckenridge.


Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
BY JOHN HALLUM.
VOL. I.
ALBANY: WEED, PARSON'S AND COMPANY, PRINTERS.
1887.

Entered according to act of Congress in the year eighteen hundred and eighty-seven,
BY JOHN HALLUM, 
In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.


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