Later Career and Death
Johnston served as Governor of North Carolina from 1787 to 1789. He presided over both conventions called to ratify the U.S. Constitution. The first in 1788 rejected the Constitution in spite of Johnston's strong support. He called another convention in 1789 which did complete ratification. After statehood Johnston resigned as governor to become one of the state's first two United States Senators, serving from 1789 until 1793. In 1800 he was made a Judge in the Superior Court of North Carolina, an office he held until his retirement in 1803.
Samuel Johnston died at his home, Hayes Plantation, near Edenton in Chowan County, in 1816 and is buried in the Johnston Burial Ground there. The plantation house is privately owned, but was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1973. It is now within Edenton. However the current house was completed by his son, James Cathcart Johnston, a year after Samuel's death.
Samuel Johnston's personal collection of books, which he bequeathed to his son James, is preserved in a full-scale replication of Hayes Plantation's library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. That octagonally shaped historic room is on permanent exhibit in the North Carolina Collection Gallery in Wilson Library.
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