Reverdy Johnson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reverdy Johnson
Reverdy Johnson

In office
March 8, 1849 – July 21, 1850
Preceded by Isaac Toucey
Succeeded by John J. Crittenden

Born May 21, 1796
Annapolis, Maryland, USA
Died February 10, 1876 (aged 79)
Annapolis, Maryland, USA
Political party Whig, Democrat
Spouse Mary M. Johnson
Profession Lawyer, Politician

Reverdy Johnson (May 21, 1796February 10, 1876) was a statesman and jurist from Maryland.

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. 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 infamous 1857 case Dred Scott v. Sandford. 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.

The Zachary Taylor AdministrationFrom left to right: William B. Preston, Thomas Ewing, John M. Clayton, Zachary Taylor, William M. Meredith, George W. Crawford, Jacob Collamer and Reverdy Johnson, (1849).
The Zachary Taylor Administration
From left to right: William B. Preston, Thomas Ewing, John M. Clayton, Zachary Taylor, William M. Meredith, George W. Crawford, Jacob Collamer and Reverdy Johnson, (1849).

He served as a Maryland delegate to the Peace Convention of 1861 and from 1861 to 1862 served in the Maryland House of Delegates. After the capture of New Orleans, he was commissioned by President Abraham Lincoln to revise the decisions of the military commandant, General B.F. Butler, in regard to foreign governments, and reversed all those decisions to the entire satisfaction of the administration. After the war, representing the riven 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 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 in Annapolis and was killed instantly. He is buried in Greenmount Cemetery at Baltimore. Prior to his death, Johnson had been the last surviving member of the Taylor Cabinet.

[edit] Further reading

[edit] References and external links

Preceded by
William D. Merrick
United States Senator (Class 1) from Maryland
March 4, 1845March 7, 1849
Served alongside: James A. Pearce
Succeeded by
David Stewart
Preceded by
Isaac Toucey
United States Attorney General
March 8, 1849July 21, 1850
Succeeded by
John J. Crittenden
Preceded by
Anthony Kennedy
United States Senator (Class 1) from Maryland
March 4, 1863July 10, 1868
Served alongside: Thomas Holliday Hicks, John A. J. Creswell, Philip F. Thomas and George Vickers
Succeeded by
William Pinkney Whyte
Preceded by
Charles Francis Adams, Sr.
U.S. Minister to Great Britain
18681869
Succeeded by
John Lothrop Motley
In other languages