Alabama was favored by the double administration of Joseph Forney Johnston, who took with him into the office of chief executive the qualities of a successful man of business and a varied experience of years. When a boy, Governor Johnston removed from his native state, North Carolina, and, his father settling at Talladega, the son was placed at school, where he was when hostilities were begun between the states in 1861. Scarcely eighteen years old, he was among the first in the state to enlist in the Confederate service, and became a private in the Eighteenth Alabama Regiment. It is a matter of common observation that a good soldier makes a good citizen, which admits of application to Governor Johnston. The record of his soldierly career may be summarized in the facts that the stripling soldier rose from the ranks to a captaincy, served throughout the struggle, and bore from the conflict four scars as the results of wounds in so many battles.

Like thousands of others, the close of the war found him practically penniless in the midst of conditions of desolation occasioned by the long struggle, and in facing the future, as a young man of twenty-three, he selected law as a profession, studying in the office of General W. H. Forney. Admitted to the practice, Mr. Johnston located at Selma, where for eighteen years he devoted himself to law, confining himself, for the most part, to commercial law, which served to imbue him thoroughly with the principles of business. While an active participant in current affairs of a public nature, he was content to render whatever service he might to the common weal, but evinced no desire for official station. In the reconstruction struggles he actively shared, and, while assisting others to the gratification of political ambition, Mr. Johnston was content to adhere strictly to the demands of his profession.

The development of vast mineral deposits in north Alabama induced his removal to Birmingham in 1884, in which growing city he practically abandoned the practice of the law, having been chosen the president of the Alabama National Bank. A still wider sphere was opened to him when he was invited to become the first president of the Sloss Iron & Steel Company. Voluntarily retiring from the presidency of the bank, he assumed the larger duties of this great organization. This responsible station afforded ample exercise of the qualities of business with which Captain Johnston was equipped, and by the application of these, the company was placed on a solid and paying basis.

After years of service in this capacity, he caused it to become known that he aspired to the governorship of the state. He had never held political office, had never before desired it, hence had never before sought it; but now he did not disguise the fact that he wished to occupy the executive chair in the capitol of Alabama. His characteristic announcement of his candidacy was quite aside of the hackneyed phraseology of the ordinary political seeker. With blunt frankness he declared that he had not been solicited by numerous friends, and was not yearning to become a victim on the altar of political sacrifice in a consuming desire to render a public good, but simply that he had an ambition to become governor, believing that he could serve the state efficiently and with fidelity. Nor did he disguise the fact that he was possessed of this ambition for the distinction which it would afford and the honor it would bring.

Having resolved to enter the race for this high office, he bent his energies to the achievement. Twice he sought the position, and twice failed. In the third contest, however, in 1896, he was overwhelmingly chosen. That much was due to his praiseworthy persistency, his fealty to his party, which was ardently shown in his espousal of the candidacy of his opponents after he had himself failed, and to the fact that greater publicity was given his forces of character, there is no doubt. His unsuccessful efforts had served to display the type of man that he was, and there was a growing recognition of his merits.

On his entrance to the gubernatorial office he began at once to reduce the government to a business basis. He proceeded to lop off, here and there, official branches that bore no fruit and yet were duly fertilized at the public expense; he regulated the system of taxation, so as to equalize it, by requiring taxes to be paid which had hitherto escaped; he instituted the system of the examination of the books and accounts of county officials by expert accountants, and by economy of management caused to accrue to the state treasury a sum exceeding thirty million dollars. He took a direct personal interest in the public school system of the state, and it was during the administration of Governor Johnston that the question of an improved public road system was inaugurated. By steps like these he came to be recognized as “the business governor.” He was unanimously chosen to succeed himself after the expiration of his first term, and his gubernatorial career closed with the last year of the nineteenth century. In 1909 Governor Johnston and Honorable J. H. Bankhead were chosen by the popular vote of the state to succeed Senators John T. Morgan and E. W. Pettus, and in 1910 took their seats. Senator Johnston displayed the same solid qualities in the National Senate that he had previously shown as governor. His was not a demonstrative career, for he was a man of solid qualities rather than one of shining gifts. There was the utmost popular confidence in his judgment and in the integrity of his character. Steadfast to duty, often when physically unable, for his health had become greatly impaired, he won, as a senator, the thoughtful confidence of the people of Alabama.

An indication of the conscientiousness of his conviction was shown in the fact that in the famous Lorimer case, before the senate of the United States, Senator Johnston, guided by the evidence, declined to be swayed by the popular clamor to vote for the ejection of the Illinois senator. To many this was thought to be hazardous, but he openly declared that rather than do violence to his convictions, he would resign his seat. He therefore voted for the retention of Mr. Lorimer, and refused to be swerved by the outcry of the popular press. Senator Johnston was preparing for a contest to succeed himself when he suddenly died at Washington, in August, 1913.

ROMANCE OF ALABAMA HISTORY