JOHNSON, THOMAS, English 18th-century wood-carver and furniture designer. Of excellent repute as a craftsman and an artist in wood, his original conceptions and his adaptations of other men’s ideas were remarkable for their extreme flamboyance, and for the merciless manner in which he overloaded them with thin and meretricious ornament. Perhaps his most inept design is that for a table in which a duck or goose is displacing water that falls upon a mandarin, seated, with his head on one side, upon the rail below. No local school of Italian rococo ever produced more extravagant absurdities. His clocks bore scythes and hour-glasses and flashing sunbeams, together with whirls and convolutions and floriated adornments without end. On the other hand, he occasionally produced a mirror frame or a mantelpiece which was simple and dignified. The art of artistic plagiarism has never been so well understood or so dexterously practised as by the 18th-century designers of English furniture, and Johnson appears to have so far exceeded his contemporaries that he must be called a barefaced thief. The three leading “motives” of the time—Chinese, Gothic and Louis Quatorze—were mixed up in his work in the most amazing manner; and he was exceedingly fond of introducing human figures, animals, birds and fishes in highly incongruous places. He appears to have defended his enormities on the ground that “all men vary in opinion, and a fault in the eye of one may be a beauty in that of another; ’tis a duty incumbent on an author to endeavour at pleasing every taste.” Johnson, who was in business at the “Golden Boy” in Grafton Street, Westminster, published a folio volume of Designs for Picture Frames, Candelabra, Ceilings, &c. (1758); and One Hundred and Fifty New Designs (1761).
JOHNSON, SIR WILLIAM (1715–1774), British soldier and
American pioneer, was born in Smithtown, County Meath, Ireland,
in 1715, the son of Christopher Johnson, a country gentleman.
As a boy he was educated for a commercial career, but
in 1738 he removed to America for the purpose of managing a
tract of land in the Mohawk Valley, New York, belonging to his
uncle, Admiral Sir Peter Warren (1703–1752). He established
himself on the south bank of the Mohawk river, about 25 m.
W. of Schenectady. Before 1743 he removed to the north side
of the river. The new settlement prospered from the start, and
a valuable trade was built up with the Indians, over whom
Johnson exercised an immense influence. The Mohawks
adopted him and elected him a sachem. In 1744 he was appointed
by Governor George Clinton (d. 1761) superintendent
of the affairs of the Six Nations (Iroquois). In 1746 he was made
commissary of the province for Indian affairs, and was influential
in enlisting and equipping the Six Nations for participation in
the warfare with French Canada, two years later (1748) being
placed in command of a line of outposts on the New York
frontier. The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle put a stop to offensive
operations, which he had begun. In May 1750 by royal appointment
he became a member for life of the governor’s council, and
in the same year he resigned the post of superintendent of
Indian affairs. In 1754 he was one of the New York delegates
to the inter-colonial convention at Albany, N.Y. In 1755 General
Edward Braddock, the commander of the British forces in
America, commissioned him major-general, in which capacity he
directed the expedition against Crown Point, and in September
defeated the French and Indians under Baron Ludwig A.
Dieskau (1701–1767) at the battle of Lake George, where he
himself was wounded. For this success he received the thanks
of parliament, and was created a baronet (November 1755).
From July 1756 until his death he was “sole superintendent of
the Six Nations and other Northern Indians.” He took part in
General James Abercrombie’s disastrous campaign against Ticonderoga
(1758), and in 1759 he was second in command in General
John Prideaux’s expedition against Fort Niagara, succeeding to
the chief command on that officer’s death, and capturing the fort.
In 1760 he was with General Jeffrey Amherst (1717–1797) at the
capture of Montreal. As a reward for his services the king granted
him a tract of 100,000 acres of land north of the Mohawk river.
It was due to his influence that the Iroquois refused to join
Pontiac in his conspiracy, and he was instrumental in arranging
the treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768. After the war Sir William
retired to his estates, where, on the site of the present Johnstown,
he built his residence, Johnson Hall, and lived in all the style of
an English baron. He devoted himself to colonizing his extensive
lands, and is said to have been the first to introduce sheep
and blood horses into the province. He died at Johnstown,
N.Y., on the 11th of July 1774. In 1739 Johnson had married
Catherine Wisenberg, by whom he had three children. After
her death he had various mistresses, including a niece of the
Indian chief Hendrick, and Molly Brant, a sister of the famous
chief Joseph Brant.
His son, Sir John Johnson (1742–1830), who was knighted in 1765 and succeeded to the baronetcy on his father’s death, took part in the French and Indian War and in the border warfare during the War of Independence, organizing a loyalist regiment known as the “Queen’s Royal Greens,” which he led at the battle of Oriskany and in the raids (1778 and 1780) on Cherry Valley and in the Mohawk Valley. He was also one of the officers of the force defeated by General John Sullivan in the engagement at Newtown (Elmira), N.Y., on the 29th of August 1779. He was made brigadier-general of provincial troops in 1782. His estates had been confiscated, and after the war he lived in Canada, where he held from 1791 until his death the office of superintendent-general of Indian affairs for British North America. He received £45,000 from the British government for his losses.
Sir William’s nephew, Guy Johnson (1740–1788), succeeded his uncle as superintendent of Indian affairs in 1774, and served in the French and Indian War and, on the British side, in the War of Independence.
See W. L. Stone, Life of Sir William Johnson (2 vols., 1865); W. E. Griffis, Sir William Johnson and the Six Nations (1891) in “Makers of America” series; Augustus C. Buell, Sir William Johnson (1903) in “Historic Lives Series”; and J. Watts De Peyster, “The Life of Sir John Johnson, Bart.,” in The Orderly Book of Sir John Johnson during the Oriskany Campaign, 1776–1777, annotated by William L. Stone (1882).
JOHNSTON, ALBERT SIDNEY (1803–1862), American Confederate
general in the Civil War, was born at Washington,
Mason county, Kentucky, on the 3rd of February 1803. He
graduated from West Point in 1826, and served for eight years
in the U.S. infantry as a company officer, adjutant, and staff
officer. In 1834 he resigned his commission, emigrated in 1836
to Texas, then a republic, and joined its army as a private. His rise
was very rapid, and before long he was serving as commander-in-chief
in preference to General Felix Huston, with whom he
fought a duel. From 1838 to 1840 he was Texan secretary for war,
and in 1839 he led a successful expedition against the Cherokee
Indians. From 1840 to the outbreak of the Mexican War he lived
in retirement on his farm, but in 1846 he led a regiment of Texan
volunteers in the field, and at Monterey, as a staff officer, he had
three horses shot under him. In 1849 he returned to the United
States army as major and paymaster, and in 1855 became colonel
of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry (afterwards 5th), in which his lieut.-colonel
was Robert E. Lee, and his majors were Hardee and Thomas.
In 1857 he commanded the expedition sent against the Mormons,
and performed his difficult and dangerous mission so successfully
that the objects of the expedition were attained without bloodshed.
He was rewarded with the brevet of brigadier-general.
At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 Johnston, then in
command of the Pacific department, resigned his commission and
made his way to Richmond, where Pres. Jefferson Davis, whom
he had known at West Point, at once made him a full general in
the Confederate army and assigned him to command the department
of Kentucky. Here he had to guard a long and weak line
from the Mississippi to the Alleghany Mountains, which was
dangerously advanced on account of the political necessity of
covering friendly country. The first serious advance of the
Federals forced him back at once, and he was freely criticized
and denounced for what, in ignorance of the facts, the Southern
press and people regarded as a weak and irresolute defence.
Johnston himself, who had entered upon the Civil War with the
reputation of being the foremost soldier on either side, bore with
