William Samuel Johnson (October 7, 1727 - November 14, 1819) was a politician and one of United States' Founding Fathers.

Samuel Johnson was well educated, and his knowledge of the law led him to oppose taxation without representation as a violation of the colonists' rights as Englishmen, but his strong ties with Great Britain made renunciation of the King personally reprehensible.

Johnson played a major role as one of the Convention's most important and respected delegates. His eloquent speeches on the subject of representation carried great weight during the debate. He looked to a strong federal government to protect the rights of Connecticut and the other small states from encroachment by their more powerful neighbors. To that end he supported the so-called New Jersey Plan, which called for equal representation of the states in the national legislature.

In general, he favored extension of federal authority. He argued that the judicial power "ought to extend to equity as well as law" (the words "in law and equity" were adopted at his motion) or, in other words, that the inflexibility of the law had to be tempered by fairness. He denied that there could be treason against a separate state since sovereignty was "in the Union;" and he opposed prohibition of any ex post facto law, one which made an act a criminal offense retroactively, because such prohibition implied "an improper suspicion of the National Legislature."

Johnson was influential even in the final stages of framing the Constitution. He gave his fullest support to the Connecticut Compromise, which foreshadowed the final Great Compromise that devised a national legislature with a Senate that provided equal representation for all states and a House of Representatives based on population. He also served on the Committee of Style, which framed the final form of the document.

--Career after the constitutional convention--

Johnson played an active role in Connecticut's ratification process, emphasizing the advantages that would accrue to the small states under the Constitution. He was especially proud of the document's legal clauses, in which "the force, which is to be employed, is the energy of Law; and this force is to operate only on individuals, who fail in their duty to their country."

As one of Connecticut's first senators (1789-91), Johnson took an active part in shaping the Judiciary Act of 1789, a critical law that established the details of the federal judiciary system. He also supported Hamiltonian measures that sought to strengthen the role of the executive in the federal government, but voted against giving the President the power to remove cabinet officers without senatorial approval. Johnson had become president of Columbia College in 1787, and when the federal government moved from New York to Philadelphia at the end of the First Congress, he retired from public office to retain his position at the school.

As president of Columbia to 1800, Johnson recruited faculty members and established the school on a firm financial basis.

Reference

Preceded by: First Senator

Class 3 Senators of Connecticut 1789-1791

Succeeded by: Roger Sherman

• Initial article adapted from public domain U.S. military text. [1] (http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/RevWar/ss/bedford.htm)