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American politician

Robert Ward Johnson (July 22, 1814 – July 26, 1879) was an American planter and lawyer who served as the senior Confederate States senator for Arkansas, a seat that he was elected to in 1861. He previously served as a delegate from Arkansas to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1862.

Robert Ward Johnson was born on July 22, 1814, in Scott County, Kentucky, to Benjamin and Matilda ( Williams) Johnson. His father had three brothers who were elected as U. S. Congressmen and the family was politically prominent in the state. His grandfather had acquired thousands of acres of land in the area at the end of the eighteenth century. The family were slaveholders. His siblings included a sister Juliette. His paternal uncles were Richard Johnson, a United States Representative and Senator, and vice president of the United States under Martin Van Buren; and his brothers James Johnson and John Telemachus Johnson, older and younger, respectively, who were each elected as U. S. Representatives from Kentucky. In 1821 when Johnson was seven, his parents moved the family to Arkansas Territory, where his father had been appointed as Superior Judge. At times, 200–300 boys attended the academy. The Choctaw students were at the school in the period prior to the Indian Removal in the 1830s of the "Five Civilized Tribes", but they were under pressure in the Southeast from encroaching settlers. His uncle kept the school going into the late 1830s, after some peoples had been forcibly relocated to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. The young Johnson went on to study at St. Joseph's College, an academy in Bardstown, and graduated. After St. Joseph's, Johnson returned to Little Rock. He studied law as a legal apprentice and was admitted to the bar in 1835. He married Sarah Frances Smith in 1836. They had six children together; three survived to adulthood. Sarah died in 1862, during the American Civil War. The next year, Johnson at the age of 49 married her younger sister, Laura. They had no children.

In Little Rock, Johnson soon became involved in Democratic Party politics. He was elected as the prosecuting attorney for Little Rock and served from 1840 to 1843. He effectively acted as the state's attorney. His sister Juliette married Ambrose Sevier, who was later elected as US Senator from Arkansas. Both Sevier and Johnson became part of The Family, a group of men related by marriage and politics, who dominated the state Democratic Party and politics, and its national representation in the antebellum years. Prior to the American Civil War, Johnson moved his family to Helena, Arkansas, in the Mississippi Delta, where he established his law practice. Johnson was elected from there, beginning in 1846, to the Thirtieth, Thirty first, and Thirty second Congresses. He became chairman of the House Committee on Indian Affairs. In this period, 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. In 1855, he was elected by the legislature to the seat, serving the full term 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 American Civil War ended Johnson's political career. Property damage and the abolition of slavery ruined him economically. After the war, he practiced law in Washington, D. C., for more than a decade. Returning to Arkansas in the late 1870s, he ran unsuccessfully for reelection to the Senate in 1878. Johnson died in Little Rock in 1879. He is buried in the historic Mount Holly Cemetery there.