Methodist preacher, and Controversialist Editor, Writer of books, Governor of Tennessee 1865-1869, United States Senator 1869-1875. Died at Knoxville, Tennessee, April 29, 1877. See Chapters 9 and 10.

CHAPTER 9.

W. G. Brownlow gives family history; his newspapers; leaves Tennessee on a tour of the North; quotations from his speeches; visits the Hermitage; early religious history of Tennessee; his published books; discussion on slavery with Rev. Abram Pryne in Philadelphia; doctrinal controversies with Rev. J. R. Graves and Rev Frederick A. Ross; Brownlow a Union slaveholder and advocate of slavery.

"I am, as were my parents before me, a native of Virginia. A portion of my relations, on my mother's side, were in the war of 1812, and the second war of Independence and lost their lives at Norfolk. My father was a 'High Private,' in Capt. Landen's quarter, Sullivan County, Tennessee, when peace was made and terminated that war.

"My uncle, William L. Brownlow, was a Captain in the United States Navy, died in the service, and his bones repose in the Navy Yard at Norfolk.

"Another, Alexander Brownlow, was first Lieutenant in the navy, in that same war, and his bones rest in the Navy Yard, at New Orleans, having died in the service; a third uncle, Samuel L. Brownlow, was a wagon master under General Jackson, and was in the battle of the Horse Shoe; a fourth uncle, Isaac Brownlow, was an inferior officer under General Jackson, and bore his dispatches from the Creek War to Huntsville, swimming the Tennessee river on horse back; a fifth uncle, John Brownlow, was an inferior office in the navy, and died at sea.

"I am known throughout the length and breadth of the land as the 'Fighting Parson;' while I may say, without incurring the charge of egotism, that no man is more peaceable, as my neighbors will testify. Always poor, and always oppressed with security debts, few men in my section and of my limited means have given away more in the course of each year to charitable objects. I have never been arraigned in the church for any immorality. I never played a card. I never was a profane swearer. I never drank a dram of liquor, until within a few years, when it was taken as a medicine. I never had a cigar or chew of tobacco in my mouth. I never was in attendance at a theatre. I never attended a horse race, and never witnessed their running, save on the fair-grounds of my own county. I never courted but one woman; and her I married."

He learned the trade of a carpenter, but concluded to become a preacher, and entered the Methodist ministry as a circuit writer in 1826, and continued in that service for ten years, when, according to the Methodist rule of that day, he was allowed to take a stationary residence and retain his license as a preacher and continue to preach or not, as he saw proper.

In 1828, he advocated the election of John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson. He left Virginia, came to Tennessee and took up his permanent home at Elizabethton, Carter County, in 1839, and in that year established the Tennessee Whig there, a weekly newspaper, which ran for one year, and issued exactly fifty-two numbers. In 1839, he moved to Jonesboro, Washington County, Tennessee, the oldest town in the state, and there continued to publish his paper, but changed its name to the Jonesboro Whig. He then moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, May 2, 1849, where he lived until his death. He there changed the name of his paper to Brownlow's Knoxville Whig, published weekly, but a few years before the Civil War, it was published tri-weekly. In the days of its greates influence, it is said to have had the largest circulation of any paper in the South, except probably the Louisville Journal, edited by Geo. D. Prentice. It ceased publication October 19,

1861.

In the early stages of the war, and while Knoxville was in the hands of the Confederate authorities, he was put under arrest December 6, 1861, and confined in the Knoxville Jail; released and started to the Union lines at Nashville March 3, 1862, reaching Nashville, March 15, 1862.

After the Federal Army took possession of Knoxville, he again changed the name of his paper to Brownlow's Knoxville Whig and Rebel Ventilator.

He returned to Tennessee in 1864, and was elected Governor in 1865, re-elected in 1867 and elected to the United States Senate in 1869, where he served to March 4, 1875.

In 1869, when he became United States Senator, he sold the Whig, but on the expiration of his term in the Senate, March 4, 1875, he bought a controlling interest in it again and settled down in Knoxville to resume its publication.

In 1875, the Knoxville Chronicle, a Republican daily, was published in Knoxville by the firm of Rule and Ricks, composed of Capt. William Rule and A. J. Ricks. Capt. Rule founded the Knoxville Journal in 1885, and is now, August, 1921, the editor of the Knoxville Journal and Tribune, which he has edited ever since the paper was started. He is the oldest active editor in Tennessee, and probably in America, he being, at this time 83 years old.

Governor Brownlow bought Mr. Ricks' half interest in the Chronicle, and Capt. William Rule bought a half interest in the Whig, and the new firm of Brownlow and Rule was organized. The name of the weekly Chronicle was changed to Whig and

Chronicle, and the daily Chronicle retained its old name, with Brownlow and Rule as editors, and so remained until Governor Brownlow's death. He continued editorial work until his death as his health would permit.

After leaving the South, and getting within the Union lines, Parson Brownlow made speeches in various cities of the North, including Cincinnati, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York, and Philladelphia. In these various speeches, he gave his own political career, his personal opinions on slavery as an institution, on abolitionists and secessionists. A study of his speeches shows that he was absolutely consistent and that he did not change his view to any extent whatever. The burden of his speeches was his intense opposition to abolitionists and secessionists, and his bitter hatred of each. He frankly declared himself a pro-slavery man at all times; his hatred for abolitionists was just as strong as his hatred for secessionists. His supreme devotion to the Union was the great passion of his life. Parson Brownlow's bitterest opponent must give him credit for having at all times the supreme courage of his convictions. Even while making speeches in Northern States, where slavery was abhorred, he there declared for slavery.

In his speech in Cincinnati, April 4, 1862, in Pikes Opera House, he said, as quoted in the Cincinnati Gazette, and reproduced in 'Parson Brownlow's book:'

"It is no new thing with me that I am a Union man, for I have been that all my life. I was living in the counties of Pickens and Anderson, South Carolina, the latter the home of Jno. C. Calhoun, in 1832, during the nullification rebellion. I declared for the Union then-wrote a phamplet, in which I denounced disunion, and defended the proclamation of General Jackson.

"I commenced by political career in 1828, when I was one of a corporal's guard, who got up an electoral ticket for John Quincy Adams against Andrew Jackson. I named this fact to show that I have never been sectional but always national, supporting men of integrity and intelligence, without looking to which side of the line they were on. I was for Adams, because of his talents and pure moral character, and last, but not least, because of his Federal politics. I have always been a Federal Whig, of the Alexander Hamilton and George Washington school, believing in a strong circle of the concentrated Government, strong enough to sustain itself, and put down all such infamous rebellion, such as this is. Though I was opposed to Jackson, I would have reserected him, if I could have done so two years ago, and placed him in the chair, disgraced by that mockery of a man Buchannon, and had him crush this rebellion. Jackson was a pure patriot, mover of his country, and a Union man, and if he had been living when this rebellion broke out, he would have hanged the leaders and prevented this unnatural war.

"In 1832, I was for Clay for the presidency; in 1836 I was for Hugh Lawson White, who was beaten by Mr. Van Buren; in 1840

I was a zealous supporter of General Harrison, of Ohio, a true man and a tried patriot; in 1844 I supported Clay and Frelinghuysen; in 1848 I supported Taylor and Fillmore; in 1852 I was for Daniel Webster, but he was not the candidate and died before the election came off; in 1856 I was for Fillmore and Donaldson; in 1860 I was for Bell and Everett, and I am for the hind legs of this kangaroo ticket yet. A better or a more nobler disinterested man than Everett never lived.

"Bell has gone over to secession; but he is at heart a Union man, and only yielded on account of the great pressure which but few of our Union leaders found themselves able openly to resist.

"And now let me call your attention to the sujbect of slavery, the great topic of the day. I have no sentiments at the South that I do not hold here. I have no sentiments here, that I do not entertain when I am in Tennessee. I should despise myself and merit your scorn and contempt, if I held one set of opinions at the North and another at the South. I have for years been publishing my sentiments upon the Slavery question, and I have only to say to-night they have undergone no change.

"If then the South in her madeness and folly will make the issue of 'No Union and Slavery, or no Slavery and a Union,' I am for the Union, though every institution in the country perish. And if I had been authorized some two or three years ago to select about two or three hundred of your most abominable Slavery agitators in the North, and an equal number of God-forsaken and most hell-deserving dis-Unionists at the South, and had marched them to the District of Columbia, hanged them on a common gallows, dug for them a common grave, and embalmed their bodies with gimson weed and dog fennel, there would have been none of this trouble, nor should I have been here to-night.

"Let the Federal Government now guarantee to all loyal men in seceded States the right and title to all their property, including negroes, and protect them in the enjoyment of the same, but let the title held by Rebels, seeking to destroy the Government, be annihilated, both as to negroes and all other property; and I trust in God that it will be done, and that such confiscated property will go to make up the losses of loyal men."

This speech at Cincinnati was one of the longest and most elaborate made on this speaking trip to the cities of the North.

The sentiment contained in this Cincinnati speech is set out in in the following letter, which is also reproduced in his book. His frankness is shown not only in his speeches but in his letters. for example:

"To L. M. E.

"Knoxville, Tenn., "May 14, 1861.

"I have your letter of the 8th, and also the evening Journal. "You correctly interpret the Union men of the border States when you pronounce them 'pro-Slavery' men. I think I correctly