FULTON COUNTY, GA - BIOS Brown, Joseph Emerson (1821-1894)

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Brown, Joseph Emerson (1821-1894)
(Known as Joe Brown)

Georgia politician and Civil War governor Joseph
Emerson Brown was born in Long Creek,in a log cabin in
Pickens County, S.C., April 15, 1821,. 

Brown began his political career with an election to
the Georgia Senate in 1849. Despite being popular with
voters and his fellow Democrats, he refused to run for
a second term. With the Democratic Party deeply
divided in 1857, Brown emerged as a compromise
candidate for governor. 


He went on to serve three more terms, including the
Civil War years. Brown was wary of the secessionist
movement early on, fearing it would do more harm than
good, but with the election of Abraham Lincoln he
became an ardent supporter of secession. 

He even took early military action, seizing Fort
Pulaski before secession, and the federal arsenal at
Augusta soon after. But Brown soon found himself in
conflict with Confederate authorities over most
legislation, primarily the conscription of soldiers. 

Brown claimed such dictatorial actions were the reason
southern states had originally seceded from the Union.
While he continued to care deeply and work tirelessly
for Georgia, he was a thorn in the sides of
Confederate authorities. Brown was arrested and taken
to Washington after the war's end, but was soon
paroled and returned home. 

His support for Reconstruction (believing it the
quickest method to recover from the war's devastation)
earned him a pardon from President Johnson, but
brought him enmity at home. Still, Brown remained
popular with most Georgians, and was influential in
seeing the state through Reconstruction and adoption
of a new state constitution. 

He was appointed chief justice of the Georgia Supreme
Court in 1868, serving for two years. During the
1870s, he expanded his business interests to include
mining, railroads, and real estate. But the taste for
politics never fully left him. In 1880, he was
appointed to fulfill the U.S. Senate seat of the
resigned John B. Gordon. He went on to be elected to
two more terms in the Senate. Brown, Gordon, and
Alfred H. Colquitt, known as the Bourbon Triumvirate,
dominated Georgia politics during the 1880s. Failing
health forced Brown to retire in 1890. He returned to
his home in Atlanta, where he died on Nov. 30, 1894.

Interment at Oakland
Cemetery, Atlanta, Ga. 

Courtesy of:

Ed Jackson and Charly Pou
Carl Vinson Institute of Government
The University of Georgia

and
The Political Graveyard

http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/brown5.html#R9M0IQQOA