[2] While at the Ozark Institute he may have met and befriended Isaac Murphy, who was a teacher and Arkansas state representative.

Many Unionists in the state were becoming increasingly harassed and in the case of the Arkansas Peace Society were forced to enlist in the Confederate army or face imprisonment.

Due to this, many Arkansas Unionists fled the state, as did Johnson and while serving in the Union army sent his wife and children to live in Alton, Illinois, thanks to money given to him by Murphy.

Johnson later served as a volunteer aide to the staff of General Schofield, commander of the Army of the Frontier.

[7] Before his regiment was mustered into service, Johnson and his brother, Frank, had returned to Huntsville in order to aide the army in identifying Confederate sympathizers.

In November, Frank, along with 25 other soldiers, was tasked with escorting Issac Murphys daughters back to Huntsville.

Johnson and Frank both knew of a few in town that supported the Confederacy and gave their names to the Union forces.

On January 10, 1863, 10 men who had been arrested for harassing Murphy's daughters, were taken a mile out of town and were executed by Company G of the 8th Regiment Missouri Volunteer Cavalry.

Little is known about whether Johnson had been a part of became known as the “Huntsville Massacre” but nonetheless he gave names of suspected sympathizers to the army.

The commander of Fayetteville, Colonel Harrison, decided to relocate the garrison across the border to Springfield, Missouri.

Upon Johnsons return he again assumed command of the regiment and would lead them during their March into Indian territory and eventually the capture of Fort Smith in September.

Johnson's political ambitions seem to begin on October 30, 1863, when Unionists assembled in Fort Smith for the purpose of establishing a new loyal state government.

[9] During his service he is also said to have participated in the Battle of Cotton Plant, and was at the massacre of Fort Pillow as well as numerous other engagements, including in Indian Territory.

Johnson commanded the first brigade, 3rd division of the VII Corps (Department of Arkansas) for the remainder of the war.

This would anger a large portion of former Arkansas unionists, many of whom were denied from taking office during the Civil War and they saw Johnson's snub as an extension of this.

The tension between the two would boil over in the summer of 1869 when Clayton left Arkansas for New York regarding the state's finances and the anti-Clayton forces seized on the opportunity to remove him.

Following this affair Johnson attacked the Clayton administration as being corrupt and in October of the same year he would break off and form his own faction in the Arkansas Republican Party.

This new faction was parallel to the split that occurred in the national Republican Party around the same time with one side supporting and the other denouncing the policies of President Grant.

Clayton and his allies went through a few different avenues to get rid of Johnson, issuing a quo warranto, impeachment and even offering him a federal appointment as the minister to the Sandwich Islands but all of these failed.

As if not to be outdone the liberals and brindle tails launched their own impeachment campaign against Clayton which failed similarly.

Clayton convinced the secretary of state of Arkansas, Robert White, to resign and then offered the position to Johnson which he accepted.

Rumors circulated that Johnson had accepted a bribe of $15,000 to go along with Clayton's plan, but no firm evidence of this has ever been discovered.

Their last son, Lincoln Johnson, appears to have died at birth His wife passed away in 1883 at the age of 50.

A decade later, on October 15, 1893, he married Jennie A. Mullins who became a widow after the death of her husband Benjamin Henderson Wilson, who had been a close friend of Johnson's.

All his political life Johnson was a scalawag, meaning he supported reconstruction under Republican rule but he was not a radical.