Portrait and Biography of Parson Brownlow, The Tennessee Patriot

BROWNLOW IN INDIANAPOLIS

Mr. Brownlow left Cincinnati for Indianapolis (via Dayton), accompanied by Messrs. Mayor Maxwell and James Blake, Esq., of the latter place, and General S. F. Cary and T. Buchanan Reed, of Cincinnati. The party were greeted with one continued ovation during the journey. At almost every station the cars were surrounded with eager crowds, anxious to see and welcome the tried hero and patriot. Upon his arrival in Indianapolis he became the guest of Governor Morton.

In the afternoon the party visited the prisoners at Camp Morton, where Mr. Brownlow made a brief speech, to which some of the rebels gave no very grateful reception. He was met with jeers, and cries of "Put him out," "Don't want him here," "The old traitor," &c., which he, having faced worse treatment under far more dangerous circumstances, gave little heed to. The insults came chiefly from the Kentucky prisoners, who have been, from the start, the most obstreperous and unrepentant of the rebel keepsakes.

Notice was given that the Parson would address the public in the evening at Metropolitan Hall. Although the night was dark and rainy, the large hall was crowded to its utmost capacity, with a highly intelligent audience. After music by the band of the 19th U. S. Regiment, the meeting was opened with prayers by Rev. James Havens. The following gentlemen of the committee occupied seats on the platform:

Wm. Hannaman,

David McDonald,

Governor Morton,

Mayor Maxwell,

Calvin Fletcher, Esq.

Col. James Blake,

J. H. McKernan, Esq.

B. R. Sulgrove, Esq.

Alfred Harrison, Esq.

SPEECH

Gov. Morton then introduced Mr. Brownlow, who spoke at length of the causeless character of the rebellion, and its disastrous effects, and was frequently cordially cheered by his large audience. He gave an account of his ancestry, and showed how they had all been engaged in the service of the country, and always true to its flag and its principles. He said he had been called a traitor by R. Barnwell Rhett, of South Carolina. "Rhett" said he, "was named R. Barnwell Smith, but the Smiths being all Tories during the Revolution, he was allowed by a legislative act to call himself Rhett. He call me a traitor," said the iron old Parson indignantly, "when his illustrious ancestors were hunted by Marion through all the mosquito swamps of South Carolina." (Uproarious cheers and laughter.) He commented at considerable length on the rebellion and its leaders, and declared, with great emphasis, that "if the issue was to be made between the Union without slavery, and slavery without the Union, he was for the Union and let slavery perish. (Great applause.) Let every institution die first, and until the issue was made between the Union and the religion of Jesus Christ, he was for the Union." (Tremendous cheers.) We have not space to report his whole speech, which was considerably over an hour in length, and was listened to with close and intense attention by all, and we must content ourselves with a report of the outrages practiced on the Union men, which he detailed with impressive eloquence and pathos.

In May last the South began to pour a stream as hot and ugly as hell itself from the Gulf States through Eastern Tennessee, towards Richmond and Manassas, and Norfolk and Lynchburgh, in the shape of a rebel soldiery armed with side knives and tomahawks, drinking gallons untold of bad whisky, and boasting largely and savagely enough of the things they should do in Washington. (Laughter.) I had an old banner, the stars and stripes, floating from the top of my house, on Main street, in Knoxville, Tennessee, in a conspicuous part of the city. They began to come to pay their respects to us – frequently a regiment at a time. Whole regiments of "wharf rats" from New Orleans and Mobile, as ugly and disgusting as they were vicious, would come at once, now and then, to "give old Brownlow a turn," as they expressed it. They would, en masse, come across the river on the bridge, surround my house, yell, throw stones, blackguard my wife and family, dare me to come out of doors, and I now and then accepted their invitations and made them the best bow I could. I have, time and again, gone out and given them very frankly and unreservedly my settled opinion of the whole concern, from Jeff. Davis down, assuring them that my scorn and contempt for them and the Southern Confederacy was unutterable, and then, making them the best bow I could, I would go back into the house and leave them to yell and groan around the house till they saw proper to quit. This course they have steadily kept up all the year. And yet all of this time I was reading in the papers of Charleston, Savannah and Richmond, that the Confederate army was composed of the flower and promise of the Southern States. I told my wife that if those miserable, God-forsaken whelps that were screaming like devils around our house almost half of every day were the flower of the Southern Confederacy, my prayer would be – God save us from the rabble.

On the 6th day of November last we had an election in the Southern States for President and Vice President of the Southern Confederacy, with only two candidates in the field – Jeff. Davis and little Alex. Stevens of Georgia. And when we, of Eastern Tennessee came to vote at that election we did not vote at all, but we positively and utterly refused to have anything at all to do with it. The sheriffs, who were Union men, refused to open the polls, or to hold an election, thus giving the candidates the cold shoulder, and manifesting our contempt for the whole concern. And, gentlemen, you cannot fail to be surprised when I announce to you the fact that the great State of Tennessee, casting not less than 200,000 votes as her ordinary vote, gave Jeff. Davis and his colleague in villainy a miserable vote of 25,000. Those two men are to-day holding their offices by the vote of a miserably lean minority of the people of the State of Tennessee. Tennessee was driven out of the Union at the point of the bayonet. The miserable rebel soldiery were stationed at the polls, wherever a poll was opened, with orders to prevent every "damned Union-shrieker" that might appear from depositing his vote. We had thousands of good Union men, men of good morals, members of churches, Methodists, Baptists and others, who had no desire to be involved in difficulty, and who saw that nothing could be accomplished by attempting to exercise their rights, and who said to themselves "we will stay at home and let the thing go by default." Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, if I know anything at all of any State it is the State of Tennessee, and I want you to mark well and treasure up in your minds the prediction I am about to make to you. I predict to-night that when Governor Johnson shall appoint a day (which he will do before long,) upon which the people of the State of Tennessee shall decide at the polls whether they shall come back again beneath the stars and stripes, when Confederate bayonets shall be driven completely out of the State, which they will be soon, the "Volunteer State" will come back into the Union by a majority of 50,000 votes. (Cheers.)

There is also, at this very time, a powerful Union sentiment in each of the other Southern States. These Southern traitors may talk to you about the "unanimity" of feeling in regard to the war, but let me assure you that it is all false. There is no unanimity in the Southern States. Louisiana never voted herself out of the Union. The wretches who were in power there smuggled the vote. The truth is that secession was lost in Louisiana. Georgia barely went out of the Union. Alabama was forced out through the treason of Jerry Clemens and others. The "Old North State" will gladly come back again. The Old Dominion, what shall I say of her? God bless her while he curses her leading politicians. Virginia is about ready to come back. She is just about sick enough now to be willing to take medicine.

But whilst it is true that there is no unanimity in the Southern Confederacy in regard to the war, there was one remarkable instance of unanimity that occurred in Tennessee just about the time that we people of the Eastern portion of the State refused to vote. By a strange freak of Nature, or Providence, or something else, all the railroad bridges between Bristol and Chattanooga took fire all at once, and burned down, one night about eleven o'clock. I was not concerned in the matter, and can't say who did it. I thought to myself that the affair had been most beautifully planned and executed, and enjoyed it considerably in my quiet way. (Laughter.)

It was but a little while afterward that the Legislature passed a law to disarm all the Union men of the State. Of course I was called on, in common with the rest. They did not find much to seize, however, at my house. They got a double-barreled shot gun, a Sharp's rifle, and a revolver. That was all the weapons I had. Then they commenced waiting upon all the private families. They took all the good horses that belonged to Union men. They entered their dwellings, threw off the feather-beds from the bedsteads, took all the woolen blankets and coverlets they could get hold of. They broke open chests and drawers, and pocketed what money and jewelry they could find in them. They carried away bacon, drove away fat hogs and beeves, and robbed the people of every species of moveable property.

They next began to arrest them and throw them into jail. Nor was that all. Many of them were shot down upon the streets, or in the fields, in cold blood. I could give names in abundance, and dates, and places. I speak not from hearsay, but from my own personal knowledge. A man would be quietly about his work in his fields, and some one would point him out as a Union man, and the infernal rebel cavalry would shoot him down as a "damned Union-shrieking Abolitionist." – Others were stretched lengthwise upon logs of wood, raised a short distance from the ground so as to admit of their arms being tied underneath it, and were then stripped naked, and almost literally cut to pieces. And afterwards, when those men would come into courts of justice, and pull off their shirts and display the marks of the inhuman treatment they had suffered, the Judges upon the bench would coolly inform them that these were revolutionary times, and that they could give no redress for such grievances. Every prominent jail in East Tennessee was filled with Union men.

Take the case of Andy Johnson. He is a man against whom I have fought for twenty-five years with all my might, pouring hot shot into him continually, both on the stump and through the columns of my paper, and he in turn giving me as good as I sent. He and I are to-day upon the most amicable terms. We, the people of East Tennessee, have merged every other issue into this great issue of the Union. (Loud applause.) You ought to do so in Indiana. You should never touch one of your aspiring politicians with a ten-foot pole unless he is totally and unconditionally opposed to this infernal rebellion. Where would I see a man who is base enough to sympathise with secession before I would vote for him for office? I would send him where, in the language of Milton,

 
"Cold performs the effect of fire,"
 

or, as Pollock says,

 
"Where gravitation, shifting, turns the other way,
And sends him Hellwards."
 

They drove Johnson's wife, far gone with consumption, and very feeble, to take refuge with her son-in-law in the adjoining county of Carter. They drove him into the woods, where he remained no less than three months, used his house and his beds for a hospital, and sold his goods at public sale. But the scale has turned. Andrew Johnson is now Governor. He is "the right man in the right place."

If President Lincoln had consulted the Union men of Tennessee as to what man should occupy that position, the reply would have been almost unanimously, "give us Andy Johnson." He has the unflinching courage of Old Hickory, and let me tell you, too, that he feels all the malice and venom requisite for the occasion. He will row those wretches up Salt River. He will send a good many of them to Fort Warren, where, I trust, after due trial for treason, they will be hung upon a gallows of similar character and dimensions to that upon which Haman hung.

When, upon the 6th of November, they thrust me into jail at Knoxville, I found one hundred and fifty men whose sole offence was their faithfulness to the Union. Every man among them was an acquaintance of mine. Three of them were Baptist preachers. One of these three, old man Pope, a man seventy years of age, and for many years a Minister of the Gospel, was thrown into jail for praying, previously to his sermon, for the blessing of God upon the President of the United States. The Rev. Mr. Kates, a man about seventy-five years old, was imprisoned for throwing up his cap and hallooing as a company of Union Home Guards was passing.

When I entered the door the inmates of the prison were perfectly astonished. Some of them were so overpowered by the nature of the circumstances, that they could hardly speak. "O," said they, "we never expected to come to this. We never expected the day would come when we would look through the iron grates of a prison!"

I said to them, "Boys, cheer up. Are you here for murder, or counterfeiting, or horse-stealing? No. You are here for no other offence than that of defending the glorious stars and stripes, and I look upon this as the brightest day of my life. These scoundrels will be sick of this business before the thing is over."

While I was in the jail both of these poor preachers were taken sick. The furniture of the prison deserves description. There was no sign of a bedstead, not a chair nor a stool of any kind, and the only "furniture" there was consisted of a dirty wooden pail and two tin cups. The whole one hundred and fifty prisoners could not lie down at once, so that we had to "spell" each other, so all might have a little while to sleep. A part stood while the others lay down. That's the way we lived in the jail.

These poor old preachers came near dying. The rebels showed me one favor. The jailor, I knew, as a mean, sneaking rascal, whom I had published in my paper for forgery, and I was sure that he would give me arsenic in order to make sure of my not doing so again, and I obtained permission for my wife to send me my dinner every day, and I had to send the basket full every day, and in this way I had the satisfaction of feeding those two feeble old preachers for two weeks with something they could eat.

Old Mr. Kates had three sons in jail. Madison Kates was on the verge of the grave with typhoid fever. He lay upon the floor of that damp brick jail, with an old overcoat under his head for a pillow, and a single thickness of old home-made carpeting between him and the cold, damp floor of the prison. In this condition his poor wife came thirty-five miles to see him, with an infant about six weeks old in her arms. She came into the yard of the prison and asked permission to see her husband. The officers said "No, they did not allow any body to have anything to say to these infernal Union-shriekers." I went to the window then, myself, and by dint of perseverance, prevailed upon them at last to let her see her husband. They limited her to just fifteen minutes. When she entered the door her eyes fell upon her husband lying in the corner, so weak and emaciated that he could scarcely stir. He was nearly gone. She held her infant in her arms. The sight of her husband in that condition unnerved her completely. Seeing she was upon the point of letting the child fall, I took it from her and she sank down upon the floor beside her husband. Neither of them uttered a word, but clasping each others hands they sobbed and cried together, and O, my God! I hope that I shall never see such a sight as that again.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the spirit – the hellish, inhuman, infernal spirit of secession. The Devil himself is a saint, compared to the leaders in that scheme.

In Andrew Johnson's town they hung up two men to the same limb, and the bloody Col. Ledbetter, a man born and educated in the State of Maine, going down to Mobile and marrying a lot of negroes through another woman – the worst man, the biggest coward, and the blackest-hearted villain that ever made a track in East Tennessee – this man tied the knots with his own hands, and directed that the victims should be left hanging for four days and nights right over the iron track of the railroad, and ordered the engineers to run their trains slowly by the spot in order that the secessionists on board might feast their eyes upon the ghastly spectacle. And it is a fact as true as it is revolting, that men stood upon the platforms of every train that went by and kicked the dead bodies as they passed, and struck them with sticks and ratans, with such remarks as "that they looked well hanging there," and that all "d – d Yankees and traitors should hang that way too." It is true that Col. Ledbetter, as the weather was somewhat warm and the corpses were becoming somewhat offensive, ordered them to be cut down at the expiration of some thirty-six hours, but it was for the convenience of his secession friends purely, and not from any other motive.

One day they came with two carts and took old Harmon, a Methodist class leader, and his son. Old Mr. Harmon was seated in one cart upon his coffin, and his son in the other, and each cart was surrounded by a strong guard of rebel bayonets, and driven down the hill to a scaffold in sight of the jail. The young man was hung first, and the father was compelled to look upon his death struggles. Then he was told to mount the scaffold, but being feeble and overpowered by his feelings, two of the ruffians took hold of him, one of them saying, "Get up there, you damned old traitor!" and the poor old man was launched after his son.

A few days after this they came up to the jail with another cart. We never knew whose turn was to come next. I had "counted the cost." I intended, if my turn had come, to meet my fate with the best grace I could. I had prepared a speech for the occasion, and I can assure you that I should have pronounced a handsome eulogy, if I had been called upon, for if I have any talent in the world, it is that talent which consists in piling up one epithet upon another. But it turned out that the cart was not intended for me. It was intended for a young man by the name of H. C. Haun, an excellent young man of fine morals and good common sense. He had a wife and two small children. Haun was informed one hour before hand that he was to be hung. He immediately asked for a Methodist preacher who lived in the town, to come to see him, and to pray with him. The reply was: "We don't permit any praying here for a damned Union-shrieker."