William Samuel Johnson

William Samuel Johnson 1727-1819, American political leader and president of Columbia College (1787-1800), b. Stratford, Conn. A lawyer in Connecticut, he soon became a leading figure in the colony, serving as a member of the lower house and in the governor's council. Although conservative in his views, he was sent (1765) as a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress. From 1767 to 1771 he was an agent of Connecticut in England and after his return was a judge of the superior court (1772-73). Because of his opposition to political independence of the colonies, he declined to serve when elected as a delegate to the Continental Congress (1774) and soon retired from politics. He was called from retirement to represent (1785-87) Connecticut in the Confederation Congress and at the U.S. Constitutional Convention (1787), in which he took a prominent part in the debate on represention. He served (1787-1800) as president of the newly reorganized Columbia College, formerly King's College, of which his father, Samuel Johnson (1696-1772), had been president. He was elected U.S. Senator from Connecticut in 1789, but retired in 1791.

Bibliography: See biographies by E. E. Beardsley (1876) and G. C. Groce, Jr. (1937).

Johnson, Samuel (1709–84), author, lexicographer, and controversialist. A devout High Churchman, he ascribed his conversion as a young man to reading W. Law's Serious Call. He wrote various works besides his Dictionary of the English Language (1755).

The American hymn-writer Samuel Johnson (1822–82) is not to be confused with the lexicographer.

Johnson, Samuel (1709–84), English lexicographer and author, in 1775 was employed by the ministers in power to write a tract, Taxation No Tyranny, in answer to the resolutions and addresses of the Continental Congress. In it he ridicules the attempt of the Americans to resist the will of the mother country, asserts the supreme power of the home government to require contributions for the purposes of maintaining public safety or prosperity, and contends that in Parliament all British subjects possess a “virtual representation.”