Which position did Robert Ward Johnson hold from Mar 1847 to Mar 1853?
Robert Ward Johnson Robert Ward Johnson ( July 22 , 1814 – July 26 , 1879 ) was an American planter and lawyer who served as the senior Confederate States senator for Arkansas , a seat that he was elected to in 1861 . He previously served as a delegate from Arkansas to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1862 . Early life and education . Robert Ward Johnson was born on July 22 , 1814 , in Scott County , Kentucky , to Benjamin and Matilda ( Williams ) Johnson . His father had three brothers who were elected as U.S . Congressmen and the family was politically prominent in the state . His grandfather had acquired thousands of acres of land in the area at the end of the eighteenth century . The family were slaveholders . His siblings included a sister Juliette . His paternal uncles were Richard Johnson , a United States Representative and Senator , and vice president of the United States under Martin Van Buren ; and his brothers James Johnson and John Telemachus Johnson , older and younger , respectively , who were each elected as U.S . Representatives from Kentucky . In 1821 when Johnson was seven , his parents moved the family to Arkansas Territory , where his father had been appointed as Superior Judge . They settled in Little Rock . His father was appointed in 1836 as the first federal district judge in the new state of Arkansas . Johnson was later sent back to Kentucky to study at the Choctaw Academy , which his uncle Richard Johnson had founded in 1825 on his farm near Georgetown , primarily to educate Choctaw boys from the Southeast in the English language and European-American culture . He was handsomely paid by the federal government . At times , 200–300 boys attended the academy . The Choctaw students were at the school in the period prior to the Indian Removal in the 1830s of the Five Civilized Tribes , but they were under pressure in the Southeast from encroaching settlers . His uncle kept the school going into the late 1830s , after some peoples had been forcibly relocated to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River . The young Johnson went on to study at St . Josephs College , an academy in Bardstown , and graduated . After St . Josephs , Johnson returned to Little Rock . He studied law as a legal apprentice and was admitted to the bar in 1835 . He married Sarah Frances Smith in 1836 . They had six children together ; three survived to adulthood . Sarah died in 1862 , during the American Civil War . The next year , Johnson at the age of 49 married her younger sister , Laura . They had no children . Political career . In Little Rock , Johnson soon became involved in Democratic Party politics . He was elected as the prosecuting attorney for Little Rock and served from 1840 to 1843 . He effectively acted as the states attorney . His sister Juliette married Ambrose Sevier , who was later elected as US Senator from Arkansas . Both Sevier and Johnson became part of The Family , a group of men related by marriage and politics , who dominated the state Democratic Party and politics , and its national representation in the antebellum years . Prior to the American Civil War , Johnson moved his family to Helena , Arkansas , in the Mississippi Delta , where he established his law practice . Johnson was elected from there , beginning in 1846 , to the Thirtieth , Thirty-first , and Thirty-second Congresses . He became chairman of the House Committee on Indian Affairs . In this period , his brother-in-law Sevier was chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs . Johnson declined to run for reelection in 1852 . He was appointed by the legislature to the United States Senate to fill the unexpired term of Senator Solon Borland . In 1855 , he was elected by the legislature to the seat , serving the full term until 3 March 1861 . After the outbreak of the American Civil War , he served as a delegate to the Provisional Government of the Confederate States in 1862 . He served as a member of the Confederate Senate from 1862 to 1865 . Later life and death . The American Civil War ended Johnsons political career . Property damage and the abolition of slavery ruined him economically . After the war , he practiced law in Washington , D.C. , for more than a decade . Returning to Arkansas in the late 1870s , he ran unsuccessfully for reelection to the Senate in 1878 . Johnson died in Little Rock in 1879 . He is buried in the historic Mount Holly Cemetery there .