Reverdy Johnson

Johnson, Reverdy

(1796–1876) lawyer, public official; born in Annapolis, Md. He graduated from St. John's College (1811), and was admitted to the bar in 1816. He became a nationally prominent authority on constitutional law. He sat in the U.S. Senate (Whig, Md.; 1845–49) and was briefly attorney general. He successfully argued in the Dred Scott case (1857) that as a slave Scott could not be a citizen and therefore had no legal standing. A pro-Union Democrat during the Civil War, he returned to the Senate from 1863–67. He defended Mary Surratt and others against charges of complicity in the assassination of Lincoln and worked to save President Johnson from impeachment. As U.S. ambassador to Great Britain (1868–69), he negotiated several important agreements.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.