Parson Brownlow

William Gannaway "Parson" Brownlow (August 29, 1805 – April 29, 1877) was an American newspaper publisher, Methodist minister, book author, prisoner of war, lecturer, and politician who served as the 17th governor of Tennessee from 1865 to 1869 and as a United States senator from Tennessee from 1869 to 1875. Brownlow rose to prominence in the late 1830s and early 1840s as editor of the Whig, a polemical newspaper in East Tennessee that promoted Henry Clay and the Whig Party ideals, and also that repeated Brownlow's opposition to secession by the southern slave states in the years leading up to the American Civil War. Brownlow's uncompromising and radical viewpoints made him one of the most divisive figures in Tennessee political history and one of the most controversial Reconstruction era politicians of the United States.

Beginning his career as a Methodist circuit rider in the 1820s, Brownlow was both censured and praised by his superiors for his vicious verbal debates responding to rival missionaries of other sectarian Christian beliefs. Later, as a newspaper publisher and editor, he was notorious for his relentless replies in the form of personal attacks against his religious and political opponents, sometimes to the point of being physically assaulted. At the same time, Brownlow was successfully building a large base of fiercely loyal subscribers. After the Civil War, Brownlow again resumed his opposition to longtime political foe President Andrew Johnson, an often bitter and biting dislike for each other that both Brownlow and Johnson had put aside during the dark days of the Civil War.

Engraving from Brownlow's book The Great Iron Wheel Examined, showing a Baptist minister changing clothes in front of horrified women after administering a baptism by immersion.

In 1825, Brownlow attended a camp meeting near Sulphur Springs, Virginia, where he experienced a dramatic spiritual rebirth. He later recalled that, suddenly, "all my anxieties were at an end, all my hopes were realized, my happiness was complete."

In 1827, Brownlow was assigned as a circuit rider in Maryville, Tennessee, area, where there was a strong Presbyterian presence, and he later recalled being constantly harassed by a young Presbyterian missionary who taunted him with Calvinistic criticisms of Methodism. Brownlow would often travel by flatboat on both the Watauga River and the Holston River, bringing shipments of iron castings from the O'Brien Furnance to Knoxville.

Although Brownlow left the circuit shortly after his marriage during 1836, he continued his staunch defense of Methodism and Methodist leaders against the published attacks by religious leaders and writers of other Christian beliefs within his newspaper columns, books, and speeches. For the remainder of his life, Brownlow was known to friend and foe alike as the "Fighting Parson".

Elizabethton attorney Thomas A. R. Nelson suggested that Brownlow should launch a newspaper to support Whig Party candidates in the upcoming elections. Brownlow partnered with Elizabethton newspaper publisher Mason R. Lyon, and as the editor within their partnership, with the agreement that Brownlow would receive one-third of the new profits from the Tennessee Whig. Brownlow and Lyon launched their weekly on May 16, 1839, and within several weeks, Brownlow and Lyon rebranded the paper as the Elizabethton Whig.

As Brownlow's vituperative editorial style quickly brought bitter division to Elizabethton, and he began quarreling with local Whig-turned-Democrat Landon Carter Haynes. Haynes had read law under Nelson, and Haynes later followed Nelson to Jonesborough, Tennessee, during 1840, where Haynes would eventually edit a Jonesborough newspaper. Brownlow and the Elizabethton Whig also relocated from Elizabethton to Jonesborough during the same year, where the newspaper was again rebranded as the Jonesboro Whig. Brownlow accosted Haynes in the street and proceeded to beat Haynes with a sword cane, prompting Haynes to draw out his pistol and shoot Brownlow in the thigh. and attacks Jackson's supporters, the Locofocos.

Brownlow joined the Sons of Temperance in 1850 and promoted temperance policies in the Whig (one of his more common personal attacks was to accuse his opponents of being "drunkards"). Following the collapse of the Whig Party in the mid-1850s, he aligned himself with the Know Nothing movement, as he had long shared this movement's anti-Catholic and nativist sentiments.

Partially a result of Brownlow's persistent opposition to secession within the pages of his newspapers (and partially due to his long-time feud with Ramsey, who was a Confederate sympathizer), he was later jailed by Confederate States military authorities (the CSA district attorney in Knoxville was related to Ramsey) in December 1861, pardoned, and subsequently forced into exile in the northern United States.

Sectarian debates Heading for "F.A. Ross' Corner," a series in Brownlow's Jonesborough Whig that attacked Presbyterian minister Frederick Augustus Ross. While Brownlow left the preaching circuit in the 1830s, he continued responding to the critics attacking the Methodist faith. In 1843, his feud with Haynes led to Haynes being barred from the Methodist clergy. That same year, J.M. Smith, editor of the Abingdon Virginian, accused Brownlow of having stolen jewelry at a camp meeting. Brownlow denied the charge and accused Smith of being an adulterer. At the Methodists' Holston Conference that year, Smith tried unsuccessfully to have Brownlow expelled from the church. In the early 1840s, Brownlow supported the American Colonization Society, which sought to recolonize freed slaves in Liberia. Brownlow's friend and colleague, Oliver Perry Temple, stated that social pressure in the 1830s pushed most abolitionist Southerners to adopt pro-slavery views. Historian Robert McKenzie, however, suggests that Brownlow's pro-slavery shift might have been rooted in the rivalry between Northern and Southern Methodists over the issue in the 1840s.

By the 1850s, Brownlow was radically pro-slavery, arguing that the institution was "ordained by God."

During the course of the Civil War, Brownlow returned to an anti-slavery stance, calling for emancipation.

American Civil War

On October 24, 1861, Brownlow suspended publication of the Whig after announcing Confederate authorities were preparing to arrest him.

Brownlow returned to Nashville in early 1863 and followed Ambrose Burnsides's forces back to Knoxville in September. In November 1863, using proceeds from his speaking tour, he relaunched the Whig under the title Knoxville Whig and Rebel Ventilator and began vengefully pursuing ex-Confederates. The military Governor Andrew Johnson had enacted a series of measures that essentially prevented ex-Confederates from voting, and on March 4 Brownlow was elected by a 23,352 to 35 vote, and the amendments passed by a similarly lopsided margin. He was sworn in on April 5 and submitted the 13th Amendment for ratification the following day.

The Radicals nominated Brownlow for a second term for governor in February 1867. His opponent was Emerson Etheridge, a frequent critic of the Brownlow administration. The legislature passed a bill giving the state's black residents the right to vote, and Union Leagues were organized to help freed slaves in this process. Members of these leagues frequently clashed with disfranchised ex-Confederates, including members of the burgeoning Ku Klux Klan, and Brownlow organized a state guard, led by General Joseph Alexander Cooper, to protect voters (and harass the opposition). The William G. Brownlow Family Papers, 1836-1900, archived by the Tennessee Secretary of State, contains one letter dated July 4, 1868, from the Great-Grand Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan Stella Morton, in which Morton threatens Governor Brownlow's life.

In an interview with the Cincinnati Commercial, Forrest stated, "I have never recognized the present government in Tennessee as having any legal existence." He objected to Brownlow calling out the militia and warned if they "committed outrages...they and Mr. Brownloe's government will be swept out of existence not a Radical will be left alive." Forrest claimed the Klan had more than 40,000 members in Tennessee and 550,000 in the southern states. He said the Klan supported the Democratic Party. Forrest suggested that a proclamation of Brownlow called for shooting members of the Klan. Forrest denied being a member of the Klan himself.

Forrest and twelve other Klan members submitted a petition to Brownlow, stating they would cease their activities if Confederates were given the right to vote.

"The leading men in the South still look upon the separation of the south from the Union as a hopeful probability. The devil is in them, and they will get up another rebellion if they see any chance of success. They exalt in private over the reduction of the regular army, which Congress foolishly cut down to 30,000 men, and they boast of having enough arms to organize an army at any time. Davis, Toombs and Stephens express the sentiments of the masses of the Southern people...[the plan is to] try to accomplish at the ballot-box and by legislation what they failed to do in the field...to get control of the National Government by the aid of the Democratic party, to destroy all the work of reconstruction, and during the administration of a Democratic President to reorganize the Southern Confederacy, after long and careful preparation." — Parson Brownlow, August 1871 Having sold the Whig in 1869, Brownlow purchased an interest in the Knoxville Chronicle, a Republican newspaper published by his old protégé, William Rule. The paper's name was changed to the Knoxville Whig and Chronicle.

On the night of April 28, 1877, Brownlow collapsed at his home, and died the following afternoon. The cause of death was given as "paralysis of the bowels."

Legacy

Rule continued editing the Knoxville Chronicle, which was eventually renamed The Knoxville Journal. The Knoxville Journal remained one of Knoxville's daily newspapers until it folded in 1991. Adolph Ochs, who later became publisher of the New York Times, began his career at the Chronicle in the early 1870s.

Rule writes that Brownlow was "a master of invective and burning sarcasm, and he flourished in an age when such things were expected of a public journalist." J. Austin Sperry, Brownlow's rival editor in pre-Civil War Knoxville, admitted that Brownlow was a remarkable judge of human nature.

Brownlow remained a divisive figure for decades after his death. Historian Stephen Ash writes, "more than 120 years after his death, merely mentioning his name in the Volunteer State can evoke raucous laughter or bitter curses." A 1981 poll of 52 Tennessee historians that ranked the state's governors on ability, accomplishments, and statesmanship placed Brownlow last on the list. Journalist Steve Humphrey argues that Brownlow was a talented newspaper editor and reporter, as evidenced by his reporting on events such as the opening of the Gayoso Hotel in Memphis and Knoxville's 1854 cholera epidemic. The Capitol Committee of the Tennessee General Assembly removed the official portrait of Brownlow that had only been briefly installed during April 1987 within the Legislative Library of state capitol building, upon the recommendation of Democratic Tennessee State Senator Douglas Henry.

Family

"Liberty & Union. Now & Forever, One and Inseperable" - 34-star U.S. flag given to Susan Brownlow by the Ladies of Philadelphia, June 13, 1862 (East Tennessee Historical Society) Brownlow and his wife Eliza had seven children: Susan, John Bell, James Patton, Mary, Fannie, Annie, and Caledonia Temple. Eliza was a grand-niece of Edmund P. Gaines and George Strother Gaines. Her father was 25 years older than her mother; James O'Brien and three of his brothers operated iron mines in East Tennessee. James Patton Brownlow was also a colonel in the Union Army during the Civil War, though he was later brevetted to brigadier general by President Johnson. He served as an adjutant general in the state guard during his father's term as governor. Susan Brownlow Sawyers Boynton and her four younger sisters all survived to adulthood, married, and had children of their own.

Walter P. Brownlow, a nephew of Parson Brownlow, served as a U.S. congressman from Tennessee's 1st district from 1897 until his death. James Stewart Martin, another nephew of Parson Brownlow (the son of his sister Nancy), served as a U.S. congressman from Illinois in the mid-1870s. Louis Brownlow, a prominent 20th-century political scientist and city planner, was a grandson of one of Parson Brownlow's first cousins. He served a tumultuous 3-year term as Knoxville's city manager in the 1920s.

Works

Newspapers

The Whig, Brownlow's primary mouthpiece, was published under the following masthead titles: Tennessee Whig (May 16, 1839 in Elizabethton – June 13, 1839) Elizabethton Whig (June 13, 1839 in Elizabethton – nameplate change) The Whig (May 6, 1840 in Jonesborough – November 3, 1841) Jonesborough Whig (November 10, 1841 – May 11, 1842) Jonesborough Whig and Independent Journal (May 18, 1842 – April 19, 1849) Brownlow's Knoxville Whig and Independent Journal (May 19, 1849 in Knoxville – April 7, 1855) Brownlow's Knoxville Whig (April 14, 1855 – July 27, 1861) Brownlow's Weekly Whig (August 3, 1861 – October 26, 1861) Brownlow's Knoxville Whig, and Rebel Ventilator (November 11, 1863 – February 21, 1866) Brownlow's Knoxville Whig (February 28, 1866 – January 27, 1869) Knoxville Weekly Whig (February 3, 1869 – March 1870) Weekly Whig and Register (c. 1870 – 1871) The Knoxville Whig and Chronicle (1875–1877), co-owner with William Rule

Books

Helps to the Study of Presbyterianism: Or, An Unsophisticated Exposition of Calvinism, with Hopkinsian Modifications and Policy, with a View to a More Easy Interpretation of the Same (1834) A Narrative of the Life, Travels, and Circumstances Incident Thereto, of William G. Brownlow (1834, a book supplement bound within Helps to the Study of Presbyterianism:) Baptism Examined: Or, the True State of the Case (1842) A Political Register, Setting Forth the Principles of the Whig and Locofoco Parties in the United States, With the Life and Public Services of Henry Clay (1844) Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism and Bogus Democracy, In the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; In Which Certain Demagogues in Tennessee, and Elsewhere, are Shown Up in Their True Colors (1856) The Great Iron Wheel Examined; Or, Its False Spokes Extracted, and an Exhibition of Elder Graves, Its Builder (1856) Sketches of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of Secession; With a Narrative of Personal Adventures Among the Rebels (1862)

Speeches and debates

"Speech, Being a Reply to Thomas Dog Arnold, Ass, Who Appeared Before the Invitation, On Saturday Night, the 18th of September, 1852, in the Hearing of a Large Audience, and Assailed Said Brownlow" (Knoxville, Tennessee, September 19, 1852) "A Sermon on Slavery: A Vindication of the Methodist Church, South: Her Position Stated" (Knoxville, Tennessee, August 9, 1857) "Ought American Slavery to be Perpetuated? A Debate Between Rev. W.G. Brownlow and Rev. A. Pryne Held At Philadelphia, September, 1858" (1858) "Speech of Parson Brownlow, of Tennessee, Against the Great Rebellion" (New York, May 15, 1862) "Address to the Loyal People of Tennessee" (Knoxville, Tennessee, March 18, 1868)