Robert Mentor Johnson was born in Kentucky on this day in history. He had little formal education but studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1802. He made his way to the US House of Representatives, serving from 1807 until 1819.
During the War of 1812, Johnson left his seat in Congress to participate in the combat. A National Park Service website on Johnson explains:
Johnson understood Native American tactics and was sent to attack Shawnee and Miami tribes who had allied themselves with the British. On October 5, 1813, at the Battle of the Thames, Johnson is believed to have killed the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, forever cementing his name in Kentucky history. As British and native forces were driven out, the Americans regained control of the Northwest Territories. Johnson returned to his seat in Congress in February of 1814.”
Johnson retired from the House in 1819 but the Kentucky legislature quickly appointed him to fill a vacant seat in the U.S. Senate, where he served until 1829.
Richard Mentor Johnson (Library of Congress)
He lost reelection to the Senate in 1828 but a year later, his home district sent him back to serve in the House of Representatives. The Miller Center argues that Johnson lost his reelection to the Senate in part due to his personal life. He had never married but had a common-law wife, Julia Chinn, a slave whom he inherited from his father. They lived together as a family when he was in Kentucky and had two daughters. When she died in 1833, he had two subsequent mistresses, who were also black or mixed race.
In the election of 1836, Andrew Jackson promoted Johnson as Martin Van Buren’s vice president to balance the ticket. Johnson had strong military experience and was seen as a war hero, whereas Van Buren had not fought in the War of 1812. Van Buren won the presidential election, but Johnson fell one vote short of the majority he needed. Thus the race was put to the Senate, which voted for Johnson. He is the only vice president to be elected by the Senate.
According to the Washington Post, although Chinn died of cholera nearly four years before Johnson ran for vice president, it was the controversy over her that resulted in the fact that Johnson was the only vice president in American history who failed to receive enough electoral votes to be elected.
NPS observes:
Although we do not have records of Chinn’s thoughts on the union, Johnson’s recognition and fondness for his children is quite well-documented. The ‘crime’ Johnson was charged with was expecting society to accept his daughters as equals.”
Moreover, after Julia died in 1833 during a cholera epidemic, Johnson began physical relationships with other enslaved women, whom he eventually sold, along with their children.
As vice president, Johnson did not have a close relationship with Van Buren and had little influence in the administration. He was considered a competent but unremarkable vice president. In the election of 1840, William Henry Harrison defeated Van Buren for the presidency. Johnson returned to private life in Kentucky after the election, running his farm and tavern. He served in the Kentucky legislature from 1841 to 1843 and was again elected in 1850 but he never took office. He died of a stroke on November 19, 1850.
NPS concludes: “For all his military and political prowess, Richard Johnson’s greatest legacy may be the family scandal he brought to Washington D.C.”
Notably, as the Post writes:
Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, who is working on a book about Chinn, wrote about the hurdles in a blog post for the Association of Black Women Historians:
‘While doing my research, I was struck by how Julia had been erased from the history books,’ wrote Myers, a history professor at Indiana University. ‘Nobody knew who she was. The truth is that Julia (and Richard) are both victims of legacies of enslavement, interracial sex, and silence around black women’s histories.’”
Legal Legacy 
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