Reverdy Johnson Biography

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World of Criminal Justice on Reverdy Johnson

Reverdy Johnson served as U.S. attorney general from 1849 to 1850 under President Zachary Taylor. Johnson also served in the U.S. Senate and as minister to Great Britain but he is best remembered for his constitutional arguments in the Dred Scott case.

Johnson was born May 21, 1796, in Annapolis, Maryland. He graduated from St. John's College, in Annapolis, in 1811 and then read the law with a local attorney. At this time it was common for a person to obtain a legal education by apprenticing with an attorney, performing clerical duties and reading cases. Admitted to the bar in 1815, within two years Johnson had established a practice in Baltimore.

Johnson soon became active in the Whig Party and by 1821 he had been elected to the Maryland Senate. For the next 24 years Johnson balanced his political life with a law practice that concentrated on constitutional law litigation. In 1845 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, at a time when the issue of slavery was beginning to seriously divide the nation. The election of Whig Party presidential candidate Zachary Taylor in 1848 presented Johnson with a change of office. Taylor appointed him U.S. attorney general in 1849 but his tenure was brief and unremarkable, due to Taylor's death in 1850. Johnson resigned to allow President Millard Fillmore to appoint his own cabinet.

Johnson reemerged on the national scene in 1856 when he joined the defense in the Dred Scott case. Dred Scott an African American slave from Missouri 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 slavery could only be imposed in a slave state. When the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case, Johnson argued on behalf of Scott's owner. Johnson used his expertise in constitutional law to try to convince the Court that the case was not so much about Scott's freedom but the constitutional right of white Americans to enslave other African Americans. Johnson asserted that the Framers had never contemplated that any black person could ever be a U.S. citizen. Therefore, if Scott was not a citizen, then he had no standing to bring a lawsuit in federal court. In effect, Scott was a non-person. Johnson's second line of attack was equally charged. He argued that Congress had exceeded its authority in 1820 when it passed the Missouri Compromise. This act sought to resolve the slavery issue by permitting slavery in some territories and prohibiting it in others. Johnson asserted that slaves, because they were not persons, had to be private property. Congress had no right to meddle with private property rights protected by the Constitution. The Supreme Court agreed, ruling that slaves were not citizens and could never be citizens. In addition, it ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. The breadth of the decision convinced abolitionists that slavery could only be ended by either amending the Constitution or by violence.

Despite Johnson's role in this case, he rejected the idea of secession and fought to keep Maryland in the Union after Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860. During the Civil War years Johnson served in the U.S. Senate. With the demise of the Whig Party over the issue of slavery, Johnson had become a Democrat. After the war he supported Reconstruction, which put him at odds with his party.

Johnson was appointed minister to Great Britain in 1868 but he returned to the United States and his law practice the following year. Johnson died on February 10, 1876, in Annapolis, Maryland.