Robert Ward Johnson - Career

Career

After college, Johnson returned to Little Rock, Arkansas. He studied law as a legal apprentice and was admitted to the bar in 1835. He soon became involved in Democratic Party politics. He was elected as the prosecuting attorney for Little Rock and served from 1840 to 1842. He effectively acted as the state's attorney.

His sister Juliette married Ambrose Hundley Sevier, who was later elected as US Senator from Arkansas. Both Sevier and Johnson became part of The Family, interrelated men who dominated state politics and its national representation in the antebellum years.

Prior to the Civil War, Johnson moved to Helena, Arkansas, in the Mississippi Delta, where he established his law practice. Johnson was elected from there to the Thirtieth, Thirty-first, and Thirty-second Congresses. He became chairman of the House Committee on Indian Affairs. His brother-in-law Sevier was chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

Johnson declined to run for reelection in 1852. He was appointed by the legislature to the United States Senate to fill the unexpired term of Senator Solon Borland. He was elected by the legislature to the seat in 1855 and served until 3 March 1861.

After the outbreak of the American Civil War, he served as a delegate to the Provisional Government of the Confederate States in 1862. He served as a member of the Confederate Senate from 1862 to 1865.

The war ended Sevier's political career and ruined him economically. After the war, he practiced law in Washington, D.C. Returning to Arkansas, he ran unsuccessfully for reelection to the Senate in 1878, after the end of the Reconstruction era.

Robert Ward Johnson died in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1879. He is buried in the historic Mount Holly Cemetery there.