Johnson, who had been a teacher, lawyer, and state legislator in Missouri prior to the war, served as a volunteer aid to General Sterling Price in 1862, during which time his rank is listed as lieutenant colonel. A letter from the Missouri governor to the CSA Secretary of War in early 1863 asks that Johnson be given a position in the Quartermaster or Paymaster departments. Johnson became a Special Agent in the Quartermasters department, and he was given the charge in the summer of 1863 to establish and oversee a wagon manufacturing factory, the Government Transportation Works, in Columbus, GA.
At the end of the war, Johnson relocated to Montgomery, AL where he practiced law until he was elected to the presidency of Randolph-Macon College in the fall of 1866, taking office in December 1866 and also serving as Professor of Moral Philosophy. Colonel Johnson, as he was known, resigned in the summer of 1868 preceding the college's move to Ashland, and was mortally injured in August 1868 on his journey home to his family in St. Louis, MO when he was crushed under a train car in Illinois, dying some hours later.
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