Josiah Stoddard Johnston was an American lawyer and politician. He was United States Senator from Louisiana from 1824 to 1833.
Background
Josiah Johnston was born on November 24, 1784, at Salisbury, Connecticut, United States, where the Johnstons, who were of Scottish ancestry, possessed some property and local influence. He was the son of John and Mary (Stoddard) Johnston, and a half-brother of General Albert Sidney Johnston. His father, a physician, removed to Kentucky in 1788, and settled in Washington, where he lived until his death in 1831.
Education
When Josiah was twelve years of age, his father took him to New Haven, Connecticut, where he attended school for some years, but when ready for college he returned to Kentucky and entered Transylvania University at Lexington, graduating in 1802. He then studied law with William T. Barry of Lexington, who was one of the leaders of the Kentucky bar.
Career
In 1805, after completing his law studies, Josiah Johnston emigrated to the newly acquired territory of Louisiana and settled in Alexandria, then a frontier village. Here he opened a law office and rapidly gained wealth and distinction. He was elected to the first Louisiana territorial legislature and continued a member of that body until statehood was acquired in 1812. From 1812 to 1821 he was a Louisiana district judge.
Toward the close of the War of 1812 Johston was elected commander of a regiment of volunteers, which he had aided in raising and helped to equip from his own means, and when Louisiana was invaded by the British they joined General Jackson at New Orleans, but too late to share in the victory of January 8, 1815.
In 1821 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives, and in 1823, when Senator James Brown of Louisiana resigned to accept an appointment as United States minister to France, Johnston was appointed to the vacancy. He was elected to the Senate in 1825, and reelected in 1831, this time by a legislature opposed to him in political opinion. For several years he was chairman of the committee on commerce, and he was also a member of the committee on finance. He took advantage of every opportunity to press upon the government the duty of seeking the mitigation of the rules of maritime warfare, urging especially that neutral ships should protect the goods on board regardless of ownership, and that articles of contraband should be limited to the smallest possible number.
Johnston was a close friend of Henry Clay, with whom he was in political affiliation, and, like the Kentucky statesman, he opposed the nullification movement of the early eighteen-thirties. He was killed on the morning of May 19, 1833, by an explosion of gunpowder which took place on the steamboat Lioness, on the Red River about forty miles above Alexandria, Louisiana, while he was on his way from New Orleans to Natchitoches.
Achievements
Connections
In 1814 Johnston married Eliza Sibley, daughter of Dr. John Sibley of Natchitoches.