Portrait and Biography of Parson Brownlow, The Tennessee Patriot

In the next contest I was a supporter of Henry Clay. In the next contest I was a supporter of Ulasu White. In the next I supported William Henry Harrison, and I sung louder, jumped higher, and fell flatter and harder than anybody else in the whole State of Tennessee. I wrote upon log cabins, and waved coon-skins and water-gourds high and low. [Laughter.] In succeeding contests, gentlemen and ladies, I supported Taylor, Fillmore and Donelson. The last contest I was engaged in, was in the support of the Bell and Everett ticket. The tail of that ticket is now doing well enough in the State of Massachusetts. It stands erect, and carries itself majestically. But the latter end of the ticket will yet do to tie to, but as to the frontispiece – "pity the sorrows of a poor old man." [Laughter.]

One word before I progress further – upon the subject of slavery. What I have to say on that subject – all I have to say at home or abroad, I will say to you now, for, ladies and gentlemen, I have no sentiments in the South that I do not entertain when I am in the North. I have none in Cincinnati that I do not entertain when I am at home in Knoxville. [Applause.] The South, as I told them months ago, when I was surrounded by three thousand Confederate troops – the South is more to blame for the state of things that now exist than the North is. But yet, I have to say, just in this connection, that if, about two years ago, I had been authorized to collect – if I had been let hunt them up, for I know the men I would have wanted – if I had been allowed to hunt up about one or two hundred anti-slavery agitators and fanatics at the North, scattered here and there, and about an equal number of our God-forsaken, hell-deserving, corrupt secessionists and disunionists, I should have marched the whole army of them into the District of Columbia, and dug a common ditch, erected a common gallows, after embalming their bodies with gipsy weed and dog-fennel. Had this been done, I should not have been here to-night – we would have had none of the troubles which afflict the country now.

One word more upon the subject of slavery. If the issue shall be made by the South – if they are mad enough, if they are fools enough to make the issue of Slavery and no Union, or Union and no Slavery – I am for the Union. [Applause.] I have told them so at home upon the stump in my own town. I will stand by the Union until you make the issue between the Federal Union and the Christian religion; then I will back out from the Union – but for no other institution. [Applause.]

The speaker here commenced the narrative of the doings of treason in East Tennessee. About twelve months ago, he said, a stream of secession fire, as hot as hell, commenced pouring out of the Southern States in the direction of Leesburg, Richmond and Manassas, by way of Knoxville, Tennessee. Then it was that the rebel soldiery of the South, made drunk upon mean whisky, halted over night – day in and day out – in the town of Knoxville, and commenced their depredations, visiting the houses of Union men and stoning the inmates, blackguarding all whom they saw in them, male and female. His (Mr. Brownlow's) house, in Cumberland street, was more frequently visited by them than any other building in the town. At the same time he was reading, in the Mobile and South Carolina papers, that the best blood of the South had volunteered in the cause of "Southern rights." He said to his wife, "If this is the flower of the South, God deliver us from the Southern rabble."

The rebel soldiers became more and more insulting and overbearing. Finally, in the month of May, they commenced to shoot down Union men in the streets. The first man they singled out was Charles S. Douglas, a gentleman who had been conspicuous at the election as a Union man. They deliberately shot him down from the window of his house, in the day time. Mr. Brownlow was in the street at the time they made propositions to shoot down other Union men. Thinking prudence the better part of discretion, they retired from the crowd, many of them slipping into their houses quietly. But the work of murder and slaughter went on. Finally, many of the loyal men had to flee to the mountains – to the mountains of Hepsidam, if you please, said the speaker.

They remained away for several days, sleeping in the open air, and subsisting on bread and meat brought from their homes, with a quantity of game which they shot.

The rebel troops took possession of Mr. Brownlow's printing office – destroyed his press and type, and converted the building into a blacksmith shop for altering old flintlock muskets which Floyd had stolen from the Government. They were contemplating the destruction of his dwelling house, and would have accomplished it but for the timely arrival of General Zollicoffer, who, being a personal friend of the Dr.'s, set a guard around the premises, and issued an order confining the Texan troops to their camps for two days.

Retiring to Knoxville, Mr. Brownlow received a letter from Gen. George B. Crittenden, stating that he had been ordered by the Confederate Secretary of War to give him (Brownlow) a passport beyond the Confederate lines into the State of Kentucky to a Union neighborhood. Mr. Brownlow was about to accept the General's proffer, when he was arrested on a charge of treason, for writing and publishing what appeared in the Knoxville Whig as his farewell letter to his patrons and subscribers. On the 6th of December he was thrust into the Knoxville jail. He found in the jail one hundred and fifty Union men – the building crowded to overflowing. Every man confined on a charge of treason was a personal friend of Mr. Brownlow's. They ran around him in astonishment, and asked him what he was thrown into prison for. Some of them shed tears, others smiled when they saw him enter the iron gates. He told them he was under arrest for treason on a warrant just issued. He had been in jail ten or twelve days when a Confederate Brigadier General, whom he had known as an old Union man, paid him a visit. Upon entering the jail with two of his Aides he shook hands with him. The prisoners all crowded round to see the "sight." After a while the Brigadier said it was too bad to see Brownlow in such a place, and tried to impress upon the patriot's mind the propriety of his taking the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy, upon which condition he should be released immediately. Brownlow was in a good humor until that proposition was made. That stirred up the bile of his stomach. "Sir," said he to the officer, looking him full in the eye, "I will be here till I die with old age, or till I rot in prison, before I will take the oath of allegiance to the Southern Confederacy. You have no Government. I deny that you are authorized to administer such an oath. You have organized a big Southern mob – not a Government. You have never been recognized by any civilized Government on the face of God Almighty's earth, and you never will be. And yet you are here asking me to take the oath of allegiance to the vilest mob that was ever organized South of Mason and Dixon's line. Not wishing to be profane, nor desiring to be regarded by you in that light, permit me to conclude my remarks by saying that I will see your Southern Confederacy in the infernal regions, and you high on top of it before I will take the oath." The officer remarked that that was d – d plain talk. Mr. Brownlow replied that it was the right way to make men understand each other. The General turned upon his heel, tipped his duck-bill cap and walked off. [Applause.]

When the speaker entered the jail he found among the inmates three Baptist preachers. One of them, a Mr. Pope, 77 years of age, was charged with having prayed to the Lord to bless the President of the United States, to bless the General Government, and put an end to this unholy war. Another old man – a minister – 70 years of age, was thrust into jail for having thrown up his hat and hurrahed for the stars and stripes when a company of Union Home Guards marched by his house with the stars and stripes flying over them. The third, a young man, was confined for having volunteered as chaplain in a Union regiment.

The sufferings of the inmates of the jail the speaker described as horrible. The food they were supplied with was rank and unwholesome. He, himself, got permission to receive meals from his family, otherwise he should not have been able to live through his long confinement.

Toward the conclusion of his address, Mr. Brownlow related several instances in which prisoners had been taken from the jail and hung by the troops after a few hours warning. Once they hung a father and son, whose sole offence was their loyalty to the Government, on the same gallows. They compelled the father to witness the agonies of the son before permitting death to come to his relief. The most affecting case mentioned was that of an old man, who, after a lengthy incarceration, was sentenced at ten o'clock one morning to be hung at four that afternoon. His name was William Henry Harrison Self. His daughter, a highly intelligent and well educated lady, hearing this awful news during the day, hastened to the jail, and, with great difficulty, obtained permission to visit the condemned man. The meeting of father and daughter was a scene which drew tears from the eyes of a hundred and fifty men long used to hardship and suffering themselves. They embraced and kissed each other, neither of them able to utter a word for some time. At about one o'clock the young lady approached Dr. Brownlow, and asked him to write, in her name, a despatch to Jeff. Davis, at Richmond, asking him to grant a pardon to her father. The Dr. did this, stating in the despatch, as follows:

"Honorable Jefferson Davis:

"My father, W. H. H. Self, is under sentence to hang to-day at four o'clock. My mother is dead; my father is my only hope and stay. I pray you pardon him. Let me hear from you by telegraph.

 

"ELIZABETH SELF."

The young lady carried this despatch to the telegraph office, a distance of two miles, in greatest haste, and had it sent to Richmond immediately. Shortly before three o'clock she received an answer from "President" Davis commuting the old man's sentence to imprisonment, for such length of time as the Commanding General should see proper. The joy of his daughter was, of course, boundless. When Mr. Brownlow left Knoxville, on the 3d of March, Self was still in jail. He has been released before this time, Southern "justice" being satisfied in the premises.

REMARKS OF GENERAL S. F. CAREY

General S. F. Carey was next introduced. He referred to the deliverance of Dr. Brownlow as a release from dangers greater than those that surrounded Daniel in the lion's den, and from beasts far worse than beset the prophet. His deliverance was not to be credited to their magnanimity, but their fears.

He did not like to find fault with the Government, but it did seem to him that it was time it should bestir itself, and prosecute the war with greater vigor. Nor did he approve the policy pursued towards those taken in rebellion against the Government, referred with much bitterness to the tenderness displayed in the cases of Magoffin, Buckner, and the rebel prisoners at Columbus. He didn't think the penitentiary the place for them, and would not have the convicts contaminated by them. There was no inmate of the penitentiary, though he had been guilty of murdering his father, mother, or brother, whose crime was not innocence itself compared with that of these rebel prisoners, who sport their uniforms in the streets of Columbus, insulting the fathers and brothers of those men who had fallen in defence of the Union, and sitting in privileged seats in the legislative chambers of the State.

The audience had heard the narrative of the sufferings of loyal women in the South, and yet we have women in the State of Ohio who go to Columbus, with the avowed purpose of making the rebel officers comfortable, – conduct that in his opinion, and notwithstanding their sex, deserved the halter. He had no sympathy with the rebellion or with rebels, and was for cleaning them out root and branch.

In speaking on this subject, he felt the utter feebleness of human language. After it was exhausted, the great crime of rebellion looms up in all its terrible proportions. God speed the day when we shall be delivered! And yet he had no hope for the country till all the remnants of miserable partyism are swept away; he had no hope for it, while politicians were busy at the Capital intriguing and scheming for the preservation of some old broken down faction called a party. We need patriotism, not party.

Referring to the remarks of Mr. Brownlow, respecting the treatment that should be meted out to disunionists North and South, Mr. Carey said that while he respected the right of free speech, he was for hanging any man who favored disunion and dared to say so. Every man has his rights, the convict on the gallows, the thief in the penitentiary, but when a man abuses his rights, the right of free speech, to express himself in favor of disunion, be he Wendell Phillips, or any other man, cut him down.

The masses of the people in the North are in favor of a restoration of the Union as it existed before the war. But if the war continues, and the people of the rebellious States are given over to hardness of heart, if they shoot our pickets, if it proves necessary to send a few more thousand men from the loyal States to put down the rebellion, and people Southern grave yards, a cry will go up from Maine to the Pacific to clean out the rebels, niggers and all.

He believed the whole purpose of the Administration in the prosecution of the war, was to preserve the Republic and all its institutions as they existed when it came into power; and nothing is more certain than that the Union will be preserved, though it cost all our property and half the lives in the Republic.

He appealed to mothers to exert their influence in kindling a spirit of exalted patriotism, and to teach their sons not to be Democrats or Republicans, but to be patriots; and appealed to the ladies of the city to visit the hospitals, comfort the sick, point the dying to the land where there is no secession and no rebels, and give of their time, sympathy, and means to soothe the sufferings and lighten the afflictions of those who had volunteered in defence of the Union.

Gen. Carey, of whose vigorous speech we give but a brief outline, retired amid prolonged cheers. The "Star Spangled Banner" was sung, and Lieutenant-Governor Fisk, of Kentucky, introduced by the Chairman.

REMARKS OF MR. FISK

Mr. Fisk said he believed we were, all of us, filled with a righteous determination to give the present Administration all the aid in our power to put down the rebellion. He remembered when deputations of the Legislatures of Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio had met in that place, and that on that occasion no sentiment met a more hearty response than that of Andrew Jackson: "The Union must be preserved." What we want is the Union and the Constitution as they were; and while our armies are in the field fighting for their preservation, let us be careful that no mischief-makers at home pervert the object of the war to the utter subversion of one or the other.

He didn't believe in this talk about the subjugation of the South. On his side of the river that was the argument of the secessionists, and was considered evidence of sympathy with the rebellion. He did not know what it was called on this side of the Ohio, but he did know that every such menace was eagerly caught up and magnified by those confederated with the rebels. The Government was doing nothing of that kind. It was fighting for self-preservation and a restoration of its authority, and it was its duty to send out all the troops necessary to put down the rebellion. We must fight for the preservation of the Constitution and Union, and we must preserve them or we cease to exist as a nation. If the rebellion succeeds the Government is at an end, and our history as a nation terminates. We must fight to preserve them not only for ourselves, but the rising generation and those who shall come after them.

He asserted that all the bloodshed, and all the suffering and misery entailed by this war, history would charge directly to the account of the wicked men who had inaugurated it, and not to the loyal people of this country. It was our duty to go on with this war, and to prosecute it, not in a malignant and revengeful spirit, but with the simple and patriotic purpose of putting down the rebellion and restoring the supremacy of the Government over every inch of its rightful territory.

At the conclusion of Mr. Fisk's remarks, the little sons of the members of the Ninth Ohio Regiment were conducted to the stage, and introduced to the audience. The lads sang a song in German; and when they had retired, the whole audience joined in three cheers for the Ninth Ohio, which were given with a will, the vast assembly rising to their feet.

The resolutions were unanimously adopted; after which, the proceedings were brought to a conclusion, and the audience dispersed.