Marcus F. Wright's Civil War Bios - William Gannoway "Parson" Brownlow

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Posted by Ruth Price Waldbauer
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                                  BROWNLOW
   p.304
   BROWNLOW, WILLIAM GANNOWAY "PARSON", an ordained minister of the
   Methodist Church, a journalist and prominent public man for nearly
   fifty years, was born in Wythe County, Virginia, in 1805. He entered
   the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1829, preaching on
   circuit until 1839. It was during this period that he became a strong
   anti-nullification advocate, arousing fierce opposition. In 1837 he
   became the owner of the Knoxville, Tenn., "Whig", and earned the title
   of the "Fighting Parson". Bitterly opposed to the anti-slavery
   movement, he took part, in 1858, in a public debate in Philadelphia on
   the question, "Ought American Slavery to be Perpetuated", and
   emphatically declared in favor of perpetuation. But he opposed
   secession, and so boldly, that his arrest by the Confederate
   Government occured in 1861, on a charge of treason. He was kept in
   jail at Knoxville for three months, then sent into the Union lines at
   Nashville. A lecturing tour of the Northern States was afterward made.
   When the war terminated the Republican party elected Brownlow as
   Governor of Tennessee. He held that position from 1865 to 1869, and
   was then selected to represent Tennessee in the Senate of the United
   States. When living in Philadelphia, after his release from the prison
   at Knoxville, he published a work on Secession, with an account of his
   prison experiences. Mr. Brownlow died in 1877.