William Gannaway Brownlow

William Gannaway Brownlow

William Gannaway Brownlow (also called Parson Brownlow, born August 29, 1805 in Wythe County , Virginia , † April 28, 1877 in Knoxville , Tennessee ) was an American politician and Union advocate in the Civil War and one of the toughest publicists against the southern states and the Tennessee Towards Autonomy.

Youth and political advancement

By the age of seven, Brownlow had already lost both parents. He was raised by his uncle on his farm in Virginia . He then worked as a carpenter for three years. In 1826 he was travel preacher (" district rider ") of the Methodist Church and moved to Knoxville , Tennessee in 1828 , where he published the newspaper The Knoxville Whig from 1839 , in which he campaigned for a central government. This newspaper was related to the Whig Party and Henry Clay . Brownlow was a supporter of this party. After its dissolution in the 1850s, he campaigned for the so-called Know-Nothing Party , as the American Party was called. In 1850 he was commissioned by President Millard Fillmore to implement a Congressional resolution to upgrade the Missouri River to a navigable waterway. Brownlow was a fervent advocate of his positions and engaged in heated debates with his opponents, including Andrew Johnson .

Civil war

After the beginning of the secession movement (1860), although he was a defender of slavery , he campaigned for the unity of the United States and therefore had, since Tennessee joined the southern states, to endure the suppression of his publications and even imprisonment. In the run-up to these events, he had teamed up with his old opponent Johnson to prevent Tennessee from joining the Confederation. Both were so successful that after the split, East Tennessee could only be controlled by the Confederation with the help of the military. During the Civil War in 1862, he went to the Northern-occupied Nashville . There he wrote his sketches of the rise, progress and decline of secession , of which 75,000 copies were sold in six months, and then gave public speeches against secession in all the major cities of the northern states.

After the civil war

After Tennessee rejoined the Union in 1865, he was elected governor there to succeed Military Governor Johnson. Johnson had become Vice President under Abraham Lincoln on March 4, 1865 . Contrary to his earlier opinion, Brownlow now campaigned for the release of the former slaves. That was one reason for the founding of the Ku Klux Klan . The Klan wanted to intimidate the blacks and continue to suppress them, which they partially succeeded in doing. Brownlow campaigned for military action against the local Ku Klux Klan. He gave every resident of the state the right to arrest anyone suspected of being a member of the clan. So he tried to break the all-powerful terror of the clan with the help of the citizens. But he couldn't quite control the power of the clan. One focus of his governorship was the reconstruction of the country after the war. The destroyed infrastructure had to be rebuilt. In doing so, however, he had to put the country into debt. The reduction of this debt was a major domestic problem in Tennessee in the years that followed.

In 1869 he was elected to the US Senate for a term. After his tenure in Washington , he turned back to journalism. A little later he died.

literature

• Secessionists and Other Scoundrels: Selections from Parson Brownlow's Book. ISBN 0-8071-2353-6
• Sketches of the rise, progress, and decline of secession. ISBN 0-8071-2354-4

Web links

• William Brownlow at the National Governors Association (English)
• The governors of Tennessee (English)
• William Gannaway Brownlow in the database of Find a Grave (English)