Biography of WILLIAM SAMUEL JOHNSON
JOHNSON, William Samuel, jurist, born in Stratford, Connecticut, 7 October
1727; died there, 14 November 1819, was graduated at Yale in 1744, studied
law, and, when admitted to the bar, took high rank in his profession. In
1761, and again during two sessions in 1765, he represented Stratford in the
General Assembly, and in the latter year was sent as a delegate to the
Stamp-Act Congress in New York. In May 1766, he was chosen to the Upper House
or Governor's Council, and at the ensuing October session of the assembly was
appointed a special agent at the court of Great Britain, to present the
defence of the colony with regard to its title to the territory that was
occupied by the remnant of the Mohegan tribe of Indians. He accepted the
mission, but so many were the delays interposed by his opponents that he was
unable to return to this country until the autumn of 1771. In the following
year, after resuming his seat in the council, he was appointed one of the
judges of the superior court of the colony, but retained the office for only a
few months. After the Battle of Lexington he and another colonist were
deputed to wait on General Gage, with a letter frown the Governor of
Connecticut, the object of which was to stay hostilities and to inquire if
means could not be adopted to secure peace; but the embassy was unsuccessful.
He retired from the Governor's Council before the Declaration of Independence,
and, not being able conscientiously to join in a war against England, lived in
retirement in Stratford until the conclusion of peace, he then resumed the
practice of his profession, and from November 1784, till May 1787, served as a
member of the Continental Congress. In the latter year he was placed at the
head of the Connecticut delegation to the convention for the formation of a
Federal Constitution, and was chairman of the committee of five appointed to
revise the wording of the instrument and arrange its articles. Among other
suggestions he proposed the organization of the Senate as a separate body. In
the same year he resumed his place in the Upper House of the Connecticut
Assembly, and he held it until 1789, when he was elected the first United
States Senator from that state. He rendered important service in drawing up
the bill for the judiciary system, but resigned in March 1791, in order to
devote his entire time to the discharge of the duties of President of Columbia
College, to which office he had been elected in May 1787. Resigning this
office also, in 1800, on account of failing health, he retired to Stratford,
where he remained until his death. When in England he made the acquaintance
of many eminent men, including Dr. Samuel Johnson, whose correspondent he
became on his return to the United States. He received the degree of D.C.
L. from Oxford in 1776, and that of LL.D. from Yale in 1788. He was the
earliest graduate of the latter college to receive an honorary degree in laws,
as his father had been the first to receive a similar degree in divinity.
Dr. Johnson added to superior mental endowments a fine personal presence and
a musical voice. His oratory was deemed by his contemporaries as well-nigh
perfect. Forty-three of his letters, written during his sojourn in Great
Britain, have been published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in the
"Trumbull Papers." See a "Sketch" by , John T. Irving (1830),
and "Life and Times of W.S. Johnson," by Reverend E. Edwards
Beardsley, D.D. (Boston, 1876).
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