Statesmen, Scoundrels, and Eccentrics: A Gallery of Amazing Arkansans

Robert Ward Johnson

Robert Ward Johnson One of the great antebellum leaders of Arkansas, Robert Ward Johnson, was appointed to the U.S. Senate by Gov. Elias N. Conway on July , . It was only natural that Conway would appoint Johnson. In addition to Johnson’s prior service in Congress, they were related by marriage and were members of what was called the “Family” or the “Dynasty”—the small group of men within the Democratic Party who ruled the state before the Civil War. “Bob” Johnson was among the most prominent Arkansans during the decade-long runup to the Civil War. Robert Ward Johnson was born in  in Kentucky. His family had found great political and business success in frontier Kentucky, and two of Johnson’s uncles represented Kentucky in the U.S. House of Representatives, while another uncle, Richard Mentor Johnson, served as vice president of the United States during the presidency of Martin Van Buren. Bob Johnson came to Arkansas in  when his father, Benjamin, was appointed superior judge for Arkansas Territory. With no educational opportunities available in territorial Little Rock, young Bob attended St. Joseph’s Academy in Bardstown, Kentucky. He took a law degree from Yale in . Before returning to Little Rock to practice law, Johnson married Sarah S. Smith of Louisville, Kentucky. They had six children, though only three lived to adulthood.When Sarah died in , Johnson married her sister, but they had no children. After practicing law for a short period, Johnson became Pulaski County prosecuting attorney in . After two years, he won election as state attorney general,and in  was elected as the state’s sole member of the U.S. House of Representatives. During his three terms in the House,Johnson was low key—though he was a major supporter of federal aid for railroad construction and served as chairman of the House Committee on Indian Affairs. He declined to run for reelection in .  Johnson’s respite from Congress was brief, for in  he was drafted to succeed Arkansas’s U.S. Sen. Solon Borland, who newly elected President Franklin Pierce had named minister plenipotentiary to Central America and stationed in Nicaragua. In  Johnson was selected to serve a full term. Thus, Johnson was caught up in the maelstrom surrounding the great debate on the future of slavery in America. Johnson already had a reputation as a hardliner when it came to defending slavery. During his terms in the House he had worked to rouse concern among Arkansans for what he viewed as a sustained attack on the slave economy. In  Congressman Johnson issued an “Address to the People of Arkansas” in which he startled his constituents with the alarming news that the national union is “a matter that might be seriously questioned!” Johnson’s early efforts to arouse sectional sentiment in Arkansas failed, but as time passed he gained assistance from Congressman Thomas Hindman and others. He was a stout opponent of regular Democratic presidential nominee Stephen A. Douglas in , throwing his support behind John C.Breckinridge of Kentucky,the southern candidate.When Republican Abraham Lincoln emerged victorious in , Johnson issued a public letter to the people of the state calling for “sympathy with the seceding states” and refusal to “submit to . . . the great powers and forces . . . directed toward their subservience and subjugation.” In his last address before departing Congress, Johnson admitted that dissolution of the Union would be sorrowful: “I know from the bottom of my soul that I am not averse to the continuation and preservation of the present Union of States . . . and I feel from the bottom of my heart whenever it shall be divided it will be given up for petty causes . . . irritations and misapprehensions, to the consequences of war and the contingencies of blood and disaster.” When Arkansas finally seceded in May , Johnson was one of five Arkansans elected to the Provisional Confederate Congress. He was later selected by the state legislature to serve as one of Arkansas’s two Confederate senators. Serving on the rebel senate’s powerful Military Affairs Committee, Johnson was an ally of Confederate president Jefferson Davis.  ANTEBELLUM POLITICIANS The Civil War proved a disaster for Johnson and his family.He lost his plantations and the enslaved people used to work them.After fleeing to Galveston, Texas, in preparation for moving to South America, Johnson changed his mind and returned to Arkansas,where he opened a law practice with his old political enemy, Albert...