interests. During the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850 and 1851, Johnson was one of the four delegates from the transmontane district of Wood, Ritchie, Harrison, Doddridge, Tyler, and Wetzel Counties, alongside John F. Snodgrass, Gideon D. Camden and Peter G. Van Winkle. As the convention's eldest delegate, Johnson called the convention to order and chaired the suffrage committee, where he fought for universal adult white male suffrage and against a poll tax. The General Assembly elected Johnson Governor of Virginia in 1851, shortly before the new state constitution made the office elective by voters. Johnson thus served a short term, and became the Democratic Party's candidate in September 1851, then won reelection by defeating the Whig candidate (also from west of the Appalachians), George W. Summers. The only Virginia governor from west of the Allegheny Mountains entered upon the duties of the office under the new constitution on January 1, 1852. He served four years before returning to his Bridgeport home, although he also became a widower while in office. American Civil War Johnson had been a Democratic presidential elector in 1860 and personally disfavored secession. However, during Virginia's secession crisis in 1861, Johnson joined in the Confederate States' declared secession, became an elector for Jefferson Davis as the Confederate President, and ultimately moved to Staunton for the war's duration when U.S. Army soldiers occupied Bridgeport. Pro-Union men held a mass meeting in Clarksburg on April 22, 1861, to hear an address by John S. Carlile, and another on May 3, 1861, to hear an address by Francis H. Pierpont. However, Johnson countered by chairing another meeting on April 26 of "Southern Rights" men, including W.P. Cooper, Norval Lewis, and W. F. Gordon. Final years, death and legacy In 1866, Johnson, who had returned to Bridgeport, formally joined the Simpson Creek Baptist Church, whose churchyard his wife had been buried 13 years before. He died at his home, Oakdale, in Bridgeport, West Virginia, in 1877 and was buried beside his wife and young children in the old Brick Church Cemetery. In 1941, it became known as the Bridgeport Cemetery, as various political and religious figures consolidated the Simpson Creek Baptist Cemetery with the adjoining Odd Fellows Lodge cemetery and the Masonic Lodge Cemetery. Meanwhile, Bridgeport had been formally incorporated in 1887, a decade after Johnson's death. Several locations in Bridgeport, West Virginia honor Johnson, including Johnson Avenue, Johnson Elementary School,