Note 670 — Chapter III

A shining exception to the sweep of Judge Jones's assertion is found in the case of that gifted and eminent man, Dr. William Samuel Johnson, first Senator in the Constitutional Congress from Connecticut, and president of Columbia College. Though not a clergyman, he had been a lay reader in the Episcopal Church, as inheriting from his distinguished father, and accepting through his own convictions, its doctrine and discipline. Strongly conservative, with many fond ties to England and Englishmen from long residence abroad as an agent of his colony, he might naturally have espoused the side of the mother country. Indeed, rather from a suspicion that he would do so than from any overt act of his, he was arrested on an occasion of popular excitement, in 1779. But he proved to be among the wisest and firmest of patriots. See his Life, by Dr. E. E. Beardsley, 2d edition, Boston, 1886.