William Gannaway "Parson" Brownlow (August 29, 1805April 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 Whig Party ideals and opposed secession 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 with rival missionaries of other sectarian Christian beliefs. Later, as a newspaper publisher and editor, he was notorious for his relentless 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.
Brownlow returned to Tennessee in 1863 and in 1865 became the war governor with the U.S. Army behind him. He joined the Radical Republicans and spent much of his term opposing the policies of his longtime political foe Andrew Johnson. His gubernatorial policies, which were both autocratic and progressive, helped Tennessee become the first former Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union in 1866, "exempting it from the lengthy federal military reconstruction inflicted on most of the South".
Brownlow utilized the Tennessee state government to enfranchise African-American former male slaves with the right to vote and to qualify as candidates for public offices in Tennessee elections soon after the Civil War. Soon after, ex-Confederate political leaders and military officers using the Ku Klux Klan and likeminded vigilante groups, worked to disenfranchise African-Americans.
Early life
Brownlow was born in Wythe County, Virginia, in 1805, the eldest son of Joseph A. Brownlow and Catherine Gannaway. Joseph Brownlow, an itinerant farmer, was born in Augusta County, Virginia in 1782 and died during 1816 in Blountville, Tennessee and Catherine Gannaway followed three months later, leaving William orphaned at the age of 10. The first Brownlow forebear in Virginia was William Brownlow, who was born in Magherafelt, Ulster in 1709 and emigrated to Virginia in 1731. Brownlow and his four siblings were split up among relatives, with Brownlow spending the remainder of his childhood on his uncle John Gannaway's farm. At age 18, Brownlow went to Abingdon where he learned the trade of carpentry from another uncle, George Winniford.
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." He immediately abandoned the carpentry trade and began studying to become a Methodist minister. In Fall 1826, he attended the annual meeting of the Holston Conference of the Methodist Church in Abingdon. He applied to join the travelling ministry (commonly called "circuit riders"), and was admitted that year by Bishop Joshua Soule.
The competition in Southern Appalachia for both converts and their tithes among the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians was fierce, and diatribes in both speech and print against rival sectarian Christian beliefs and leaders were commonplace among missionaries. In defending his Methodist Church and its early leaders, Brownlow, took such debates to a whole new level, attacking not only Baptist and Presbyterian theology but also the character of his rival missionaries.
In 1826, Soule gave Brownlow his first assignment as a circuit rider—the Black Mountain circuit in North Carolina. It was here that Brownlow first ran afoul of the Baptists—who were spreading quickly throughout the Southern Appalachian region—and developed an immediate dislike of them, considering them narrow-minded bigots who engaged in "dirty" rituals such as foot washing.
During the following year 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.