William G. Brownlow





William G. Brownlow

Fighting Parson ofthe

Southern Highlands

By E. Merton Coulter

With a New Introduction by Stephen V. Ash

The University of Tennessee Press I Knoxville



~
The Appalachian Echoes series is dedicated to reviving and con­

y/ • wee textualizing classic books about Appalachia for a new genera­
tion ofreaders. By making available a wide spectrum ofworks­

from fiction to nonfiction, from folklife and letters to history, sociology,
politics, religion, and biography-the series seeks to reveal the diversity
that has always characterized Appalachian writing, a diversity that prom­
ises to confront and challenge long-held stereotypes about the region.

Copyright © 1999 by The University of Tennessee Press I Knoxville.
All Rights Reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America.

First Edition.

The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI!
NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). The binding mate­
rials have been chosen for strength and durability. Printed on recycled
paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Coulter, E. Merton (Ellis Merton), 1890-
William G. Brownlow: fighting parson of the Southern Highlands I by
E. Merton Coulter; with a new introduction by Stephen V. Ash.

p.cm.
Originally published: Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1937.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 1-57233-050-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Brownlow, William Gannaway, 1805-1877. 2. Tennessee, East­
Politics and government. 3. Tennessee, East-Biography. 4. Tennessee,
East-History-Civil War, 1861-1865. 5. Reconstruction-Tennessee,
East. 6. 10urnalists-Tennessee, East-Biography. 7. Methodist Church­
Tennessee, East-Clergy-Biography. 8. Governors-Tennessee-Biog­
raphy. 1. Title.
E415.9B9 C7 1999
976.8'04'092--dc21
[B] 98-40300



Contents

Foreword by Durwood Dunn
Introduction by Stephen V. Ash

I. Crusading in the Southern Highlands
II. A New Parson Rides the Circuit

III. Personal Journalism
IV. Religious Warfare Renewed
V. Black Slaves and Mountain Whites

VI. Ante-Bellum Politics
VII. Secession
VIII. East Tennesseeans Rebel against Rebellion

IX. In Jail and Out
X. A Tour of the North

XI. Back in Tennessee
XII. A New Governor Seeks Vengeance
XIII. The Minority Establishes Itself
XlV. The Reign of the Tennessee Radicals
XV. The Storm before the Calm
XVI. The Like Shall Not Be Seen Again
Bibliography
Index

vii
xi
1

17
35
53
84

110
134
154
178
208
235
262
294
325
349
374
401
413



Illustrations

173
facing page 182

frontispiece
5

following page 23
68
76
78

Parson William Gannaway Brownlow
Camp-meeting Ecstasy
Map of the Brownlow Country
J. R. Graves, According to Brownlow
"Elder B. Changing Clothes Before the Ladies, After Immersing!"
Pictorial Proof that the Sprinkling Form of Baptism is Correct
The Hanging of Jacob Harmon and his Son, Henry,

by the Confederates
A Scene from the Great Smokies of East Tennessee
Brownlow at the Southern Loyalists' Convention

at Philadelphia facing page 183
Brownlow Entering the Knoxville Jail 190
The Parson's Part in a Touching Jail Scene 193
A Specimen of Brownlow's Handwriting-and Language 198
A Painting of Brownlow in the Tennessee Capitol facing page 384
Knoxville in the Seventies facing page 385



Foreword
In 1964, historian George B. Tindall suggested mythology might be the
new frontier of southern history, since innumerable efforts to identify a
central theme regarding the South had frustrated so many previous schol­
ars. By mythology, Tindall simply meant examining the beliefs, aspira­
tions, ideals, and meanings through which a people identify themselves
within some historical context and seek by this controlling generaliza­
tion to give philosophical meaning to the facts of ordinary life, while at
the same time defending themselves from outside attack. Under these
circumstances, the myth itself becomes one of the realities of history,
influencing or shaping the subsequent pattern of behavior for partici­
pants in the folk community. Yet in the new field ofAppalachian studies
that emerged in the 1980s, myth has a particularly pejorative connota­
tion, used most frequently as it has been by past observers of the region
to fix an invidious and enduring stereotype on the inhabitants. Appala­
chian mythmakers are therefore always frankly suspect-hostile, preju­
diced outsiders pursuing their own agenda for literary recognition or
some well-meaning but grossly distorted reform effort.

Historian David C. Hsiung is one of the few scholars to explore the
role of Appalachian natives in creating their own mythology; his Two
Worlds in the Tennessee Mountains: Exploring the Origins ofAppala­
chian Stereotypes offers the interesting scenario of town dwellers in up­
per East Tennessee initially caricatured their more backward rural neigh­
bors in the mountains and hollows. Local color writers were quick to
seize on this image, but distorted it even further by representing all Ap­
palachians as possessing the undesired traits that became an enduring
national stereotype.

Yet no single individual within Appalachia self-consciously cre­
ated a myth both about himself and about his region-East Tennessee­
as did William G. Brownlow. "I would as soon be engaged in importing
the plague from the East," Parson Brownlow vehemently declared on
February 16, 1861, in the pages of his Knoxville Whig, "as in helping to
build up a Southern Confederacy upon the ruins of the American Consti­
tution." Thus the "Parson," as he was commonly called, with character­
istic vituperation and exaggerated rhetoric, lambasted supporters of the



vm FOREWORD

Confederacy even after East Tennessee was occupied by southern troops,
and simultaneously demonstrated why he was among Tennessee's most
colorful and controversial political leaders of the nineteenth century.

It is perhaps a tribute to the freedom of speech within the Confed­
eracy that Brownlow's paper, and harshly critical editorials, were allowed
to continue so long. After he refused allegiance to the Confederate gov­
ernment and fled to the Great Smoky Mountains in November 1861, his
press and types were finally destroyed. Found by Confederate scouts, he
was returned to Knoxville, where he was briefly placed in jail. Finally
allowed to flee to the North in March 1862, Brownlow became an ex­
tremely popular lecturer on behalf of the Unionists of East Tennessee
throughout the North. His resulting summary of his trials and tribula­
tions, related with characteristic terrible contumacy and abuse, in between
scenes of exaggerated pathos, was published in 1862 as Sketches of the
Rise, Progress, and Decline ofSecession; With a Narrative ofPersonal
Adventure Among the Rebels and became an immediate bestseller. Widely
known under the briefer title, Parson BrownlowsBook, this volume plus
his personal speaking engagements fixed an enduring image of both
Brownlow and the Appalachian South in the mind of the northern public.

E. Merton Coulter's 1937 biography of Brownlow remains the best
scholarly biography of the Parson and his times. Brownlow, a "some­
time" Methodist minister, had earlier fought a bitter sectarian battle
against the Presbyterians. Ironic in view of his later Unionism, he was a
leading defender of slavery, and, in 1858, he debated Abraham Pryne,
editor of an antislavery paper, The Central Reformer. In this "forensic
disputation," held in Philadelphia in the National Guard Hall, Brownlow
defended the peculiar institution as ardently as any southern radical and
heaped abuse on abolitionists. Coulter's biography is extremely well
written and appropriately humorous in relating the exaggerated rhetoric
and energy with which Brownlow assaulted all enemies-democrats,
abolitionists, Presbyterians, and, finally, Rebels-in his variously titled
Knoxville Whig between 1849 and 1869.

Stephen V. Ash's introduction contextualizes Coulter's biography
in light of recent historical scholarship, especially noting Coulter's rac­
ism and his reproduction of the tragic myth of Reconstruction so long
discarded by modern scholars. Professor Ash astutely notes, however,
the discrepancy between Brownlow's personal life and his vituperative
rhetoric, a discrepancy which sets the stage for Brownlow's role as an
active mythmaker when, as Reconstruction governor of Tennessee, he
both wrote the script and played a principal part in a self-conscious po­
litical drama that fixed the image of the loyal mountaineers of East Ten-



FOREWORD IX

nessee indelibly upon the national consciousness. Parson Brownlow's
vigorous, deliberate, and self-conscious mythmaking thus deserves care­
ful scrutiny by all scholars of the Appalachian region that he helped both
to define and delineate.

Durwood Dunn
Tennessee Wesleyan College





Introduction

Tennessee has had its share of outrageous characters over the years, but
none more outrageous than Parson Brownlow. Even today, more than
120 years after his death, merely mentioning his name in the Volunteer
State can evoke raucous laughter or bitter curses. The Parson would like
that: those are the very responses he loved to evoke in his own day.

William Gannaway Brownlow was not only a colorful and contro­
versial historical figure, but also an important one. Born in southwestern
Virginia in 1805 and orphaned at age eleven, he became a circuit-riding
Methodist preacher and traveled all over southern Appalachia, settling
eventually in East Tennessee. In 1839 he took up journalism and politics
as editor of the Whig, a newspaper he founded in Elizabethton and later
moved to Jonesboro and ultimately Knoxville. By the time of the Civil
War, the Whig had eleven thousand subscribers and was widely read within
and beyond Tennessee's borders. In 1861 Brownlow emerged as a princi­
pal leader of the East Tennessee unionists, whose resistance to secession
plagued the Confederacy. After the war he served as governor ofTennes­
see and ruled the state for four years with a Radical fist of iron.

What made the Parson stand out was, more than anything else, his
vitriolic tongue and pen. Over the course of his long career he took up
many causes. These included not only Methodism, Whiggery, and the
Union, but also temperance, Know-Nothingism, and slavery. His favorite
method of promoting those causes was to chastise and ridicule his oppo­
nents, and few men could do so with as much venomous wit as he. Bap­
tists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Mormons, Democrats, Republicans, se­
cessionists, drunks, immigrants, and abolitionists-all were at one time
or another on the receiving end ofBrownlow's merciless broadsides. Not
surprisingly, he made many enemies. A number of them replied in kind;
some tried to kill him.

Parson Brownlow deserves a good biographer. He has had a few, but
none better than E. Merton Coulter. First published in 1937 by the Uni­
versity of North Carolina Press, Coulter's William G. Brownlow: Fight­
ing Parson ofthe Southern Highlands was highly praised in its day and it
remains the standard account of Brownlow's life. To help the modem
generation of readers make the Parson's acquaintance, the University of
Tennessee Press, which reprinted Coulter's book in 1971, has now done
so again as part of its Appalachian Echoes series. l



XII INTRODUCTION

Coulter's volume has stood the test of time because its scholarship is
sound and its prose lively. Coulter was a professionally trained and highly
respected historian who earned his Ph.D. from the University ofWiscon­
sin in 1917, was a longtime teacher at the University of Georgia, became
the first president of the Southern Historical Association, and was the
author or editor of literally dozens of books. For this biography he thor­
oughly mined the relevant sources and drew on his vast knowledge of
southern history to provide context. But he also knew how to tell a good
story with a dash of humor, and that he also did in this book. He espe­
cially enjoyed quoting the highly quotable Parson, and Brownlow's in­
imitable rhetorical style comes through on practically every page.2

The book has thus aged well, but it has definitely aged. As today's
readers enjoy Coulter's narrative, they need to keep in mind the flaws and
weaknesses of the book (maybe "peculiarities and limitations" is a better
way to put it) that have become apparent in the six decades since Coulter
wrote it.

For one thing, it is not really a comprehensive biography but rather
a history of Brownlow's public career. Coulter has virtually nothing to
say about the Parson's family life or other intimate relationships. This is
due in part to the dearth of sources (Brownlow left very few revealing
personal papers). But it can also undoubtedly be ascribed to a certain
gentlemanly unwillingness on Coulter's part to pry into his subject's pri­
vate affairs. This was typical of biographers of Coulter's generation; a
modern biographer would feel obliged at least to speculate about
Brownlow's private life, based on whatever hints the existing records
contain.

We are all to some extent prisoners not only of our time but also of
our place. Merton Coulter was no exception. He was a middle-class south­
ern white male who grew up in the New South era (he was born in North
Carolina in 1890), and he had certain biases common among those like
himself. In particular, he believed blacks were inherently inferior and
undeserving of political equality, and he revered the Lost Cause (both his
grandfathers had been Confederate soldiers).

These beliefs and predilections shaped Coulter's portrayal of Par­
son Brownlow. The first third of the book, dealing with Brownlow's pre­
1860 career, is a model of scholarly impartiality. Coulter's attitude to­
ward the Parson's fiercely partisan polemics is one of (somewhat amused)
detachment-as long as Brownlow is flogging only the enemies of the
Methodist Church, the Whig Party, temperance, and slavery. But when
Brownlow takes his stand against secession and the Confederacy after
1860, and especially when he allies with the northern Radicals, disfran­
chises the former Confederates, and enfranchises the blacks during Re-



INTRODUCTION XIII

construction, Coulter turns hostile. Many regard Brownlow as something
of a hero for his stalwart defense of the Union, even under threat ofdeath,
but in Coulter's eyes, he and his fellow East Tennessee unionists were
merely "obstinate" and "blindly patriotic" and in fact "guilty of treason"
against the Confederacy. Many applaud Brownlow's enfranchisement of
Tennessee's blacks-however impure his motives-as an act of justice,
but for Coulter it was an unconscionable betrayal of the good white people
of the state. The freed slaves "were letting their animal natures go unre­
strained," Coulter tells us, and "they became a menace to peace and prop­
erty." He justifies the lethal guerrilla warfare of the Ku Klux Klan as a
necessary response to the "Black Peril" and the "abuses, debasements,
and insults" that the former Confederates had to endure under Brownlow's
rule.

In Coulter's defense, it should be pointed out that his portrayal of
Reconstruction was not unique. With very few exceptions, the other his­
torians of his generation-northern as well as southern-shared his ra­
cial prejudices and endorsed the view that Reconstruction was a "Tragic
Era," a time when the worst elements of society ran rampant in the south­
ern states until the noble "Redeemers" overthrew the villainous Radical
regimes and restored good government and racial controL

During the 1960s, however, when the Civil Rights movement touched
the conscience of the nation, younger historians began to challenge the
reigning interpretation of Reconstruction. They pointed to the accom­
plishments of the Radical state governments in the South, including im­
proved public education, that the older historians had ignored or dismissed.
Moreover, they ascribed a good measure of dignity and decency of pur­
pose to the blacks, scalawags, carpetbaggers, Freedmen's Bureau agents,
and northern Radicals whom the older historians had demonized. Some
of the young revisionists condemned the long-celebrated Redeemers as
racist reactionaries and the Klansmen in particular as murderous political
terrorists. Under heavy attack, the traditional interpretation soon crumbled.
Today the idea of the Tragic Era is unanimously rejected as myth by schol­
ars, though it still has a hold on the popular imagination.3

His judgments on Brownlow's wartime unionism and postwar Radi­
calism aside, Coulter's portrayal of the Parson has held up remarkably
well. Coulter basically disliked Brownlow, and so have most of the histo­
rians who have written about him since 1937--even those not in sympa­
thy with Coulter's views on blacks and the Confederacy. Most agree with
Coulter that Brownlow's zealous partisanship often went beyond the
bounds of fairness, propriety, and even reason. ("Fanatical" is Coulter's
favorite description of the Parson, and it is echoed by many other writ­
ers.) And all join Coulter in condemning Governor Brownlow's Machia-



XIV INTRODUCTION

vellian manipulation of voter registration and election returns. But, at the
same time, all second Coulter's point that Brownlow's private persona
stood in stark contrast to his public persona (Coulter calls him "a Dr.
Jekyl and a Mr. Hyde"): even many of the Parson's opponents admitted
that, in private, he was friendly, kind, and generous to a fault.4

In fact, historical scholarship since 1937 has not altered the basic
outline ofBrownlow's life as presented by Coulter-evidence ofCoulter's
diligent research. Some new details have come to light, however; and a
certain amount of reinterpretation, or at least recontextualization, of the
Parson's career has been done, particularly since the 1960s. (For a dis­
cussion of the studies of Brownlow published between 1937 and 1970,
see James W. Patton's introduction to the 1971 edition of Coulter's book.)

Monographs published in recent years by Paul H. Bergeron and
Jonathan M. Atkins have shed added light on Brownlow's role in antebel­
lum politics. The Parson's prewar religious and temperance activities have
been elucidated in essays by Forrest Conklin and John W. Wittig. Re­
search by Durwood Dunn has turned up Brownlow's signature on an 1834
antislavery petition-a revelation that would have mightily embarrassed
the Parson, who later became a prominent proslavery spokesman, and
mightily amused Merton Coulter, who loved to point out Brownlow's
inconsistencies. Another discovery by Dunn that would have made
Brownlow blush and Coulter chuckle is a contemporary report (albeit
secondhand) that in 1840, at a political rally, the Parson got roaring drunk.5

Modem scholarship dealing with Brownlow in the secession crisis
includes a monograph by Daniel W. Crofts and an essay by Charles F.
Bryan Jr. Both underscore the crucial role of Brownlow and a handful of
other East Tennessee unionist leaders in encouraging a firm stand against
secession by the citizens of the region. More recently, Noel C. Fisher has
produced a study of East Tennessee's internal civil war that emphasizes
the impact of the Parson's wartime writings and speeches on the northern
public and military. Anew edition of Brownlow's 1862 book, which was
a bestseller in the North, has been published with an introduction by the
present author; and Noel Fisher has written an essay comparing that book
with others by East Tennessee unionists.6

Brownlow's governorship is discussed (within the broader context
of postwar Republicanism in southern Appalachia) in Gordon B.
McKinney's recently reprinted monograph. McKinney contradicts
Coulter's assertion that Brownlow's long-term impact on Tennessee poli­
tics was slight; and he makes the point, at least implicitly, that Brownlow
played a role in shaping the popular perception of southern Appalachia as
a unique, isolated region. Other modem studies of the Parson's guberna­
torial years include Wilson D. Miscamble's essay on the 1865 election,
Lonnie E. Maness's on the 1867 election, and Kathleen R. Zebley's on



INTRODUCTION xv

Tennessee legislator Samuel Amell, one of Brownlow's Radical allies.
Brownlow's stumping in the North during the 1866 congressional cam­
paigns is examined in an essay by Forrest Conklin.?

In recent decades only two authors have ventured to write compre­
hensive accounts of Brownlow. Steve Humphrey's book focuses on the
Parson as a newspaper editor, though it does touch on the other aspects of
his life. (For one thing, Humphrey documents the fact that Brownlow
owned slaves for a time, which Coulter was apparently unaware of.) Un­
like most other commentators on Brownlow, Humphrey (a journalist him­
self) actually seems to like the man, admiring especially his editorial prow­
ess, his humor, and his generosity. James C. Kelly's two-part essay on the
Parson is not as complimentary nor as detailed, but Kelly is the only
historian so far who has reevaluated Brownlow in the light of modem
interpretations ofReconstruction. Though he condemns Brownlow's zeal­
otry and his misuse of power as governor, Kelly commends him for per­
ceiving the new political realities that made black enfranchisement desir­
able and for recognizing that reenfranchising the former Confederates
would be disastrous for black rights.8

Historians will certainly continue to reappraise Brownlow, but it is
unlikely that the basic story of his public career as told by Merton Coulter
will ever be substantially revised. And, barring the discovery of some
treasure-trove of hitherto unknown personal papers, any future explora­
tions of Brownlow's private life will be mere guesswork. Coulter's study
of the "Fighting Parson" will thus have a place on the historian's shelf for
a long time to come. Anybody else who enjoys a good book about a re­
markable character should save a place for it, too.

Stephen V. Ash
University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Notes

1. E. Merton Coulter, William G. Brownlow: Fighting Parson of the
Southern Highlands (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1937; re­
print, Knoxville: Univ. ofTennessee Press, 1971). For evidence ofthe schol­
arly reception of the book, see the reviews by Frank L. Owsley in the Missis­
sippi Valley Historical Review 24 (1937-38): 403-5, Stanley 1. Folmsbee in
the Journal ofSouthern History 3 (1937): 374-76, and Thomas Robson Hay
in the American Historical Review 43 (1937-38): 419-20.

2. For biographical information on Ellis Merton Coulter (1890-1981),



XVI INTRODUCTION

see Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary ofModem Lit­
erature (1st supp!., New York: H. W. Wilson, 1955),234-35; Contemporary
Authors: New Revision Series, Volume 3 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1981),
139; and ContemporaryAuthors, Volume 104 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1982),
94. Descriptions of Coulter's most important books can be found in Arthur
S. Link and Rembert W. Patrick, eds., Writing Southern History: Essays in
Historiography in Honor of Fletcher M. Green (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State Dniv. Press, 1965); and John B. Boles and Evelyn Thomas Nolen,
eds., Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honor of
Sanford W Higginbotham (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Dniv. Press, 1987).
See also Fred Arthur Bailey, "History in Service to the South: E. Merton
Coulter and the Political Culture of Southern Historiography," paper pre­
sented at the Southern Historical Association Meeting, Binningham, Ala.,
Nov. 1998.

3. On the evolution of Reconstruction historiography, see Larry
Kincaid, "Victims of Circumstance: An Interpretation of Changing Atti­
tudes Toward Republican Policy Makers and Reconstruction," Journal
of American History 57 (1970): 48-66; Richard O. Curry, "The Civil
War and Reconstruction, 1861-1877: A Critical Overview of Recent
Trends and Interpretations," Civil War History 20 (1974): 215-38; John
Hope Franklin, "Mirror for Americans: A Century of Reconstruction
History," American Historical Review 85 (1) (1980): 1-14; Eric Foner,
"Reconstruction Revisited," Reviews in American History 10 (1982): 82­
100; and Joe Gray Taylor, "The White South from Secession to Redemp­
tion," in Boles and Nolen, Interpreting Southern History, 162-98.

4. In a 1981 poll ofTennessee historians, Brownlow was ranked dead
last among the state's governors, scoring a 1.63 average on a 10-point
scale. See Tennessee Historical Quarterly 41 (1982): 100.

5. Paul H. Bergeron, Antebellum Politics in Tennessee (Lexington: Dniv.
Press of Kentucky, 1982); Jonathan M. Atkins, Parties, Politics, and the
Sectional Conflict in Tennessee, 1832-1861 (Knoxville: Dniv. ofTennessee
Press, 1997); Forrest Conklin and John W. Wittig, "Religious Warfare in the
Southern Highlands: Brownlow versus Ross," Journal of East Tennessee
History 63 (1991): 33-50; Forrest Conklin, "Parson Brownlow Joins the
Sons of Temperance," Tennessee Historical Quarterly 39 (1980): 178-94,
292-309; Durwood Dunn, AnAbolitionist in the Appalachian South: Ezekiel
Birdseye on Slavery, Capitalism, and Separate Statehood in East Tennessee,
1841-1846 (Knoxville: Dniv. ofTennessee Press, 1997), 14-16, 19-20,38,
97n., 104-5n., 145. Aside from Dunn's discoveries, little additional primary
material bearing directly on Brownlow has turned up since Coulter did his
research. A sizable batch of Brownlow's papers unknown to Coulter has
been unearthed recently, but it includes very few items written by the Parson



INTRODUCTION XVII

himself; seeW. Todd Groce, "With'All the Malice and Venom Requisite for
the Times': The Papers of Parson Brownlow," Univ. of Tennessee, Knox­
ville, Library DevelopmentReview (1992-93): 8-11. The editors ofAndrew
Johnson's papers have published many Brownlow letters, very helpfully
annotated, but few or none that Coulter had not seen in manuscript; see
LeRoy P. Graf, Ralph W. Haskins, and Paul H. Bergeron, eds., The Papers
ofAndrew Johnson (14 vols. to date, Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press,
1967- ).

6. Daniel W. Crofts, Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Union­
ists in the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press,
1989); Charles F. Bryan Jr., "A Gathering of Tories: The East Tennessee
Convention of 1861," Tennessee Historical Quarterly 39 (1980): 27-48;
Noel C. Fisher, War at Every Door: Partisan Politics and Guerrilla Vio­
lence in East Tennessee, 1860-1869 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Caro­
lina Press, 1997); Stephen V. Ash, ed., Secessionists and Other Scoun­
drels: Selectionsfrom Parson Brownlow's Book (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State Univ. Press, 1999); Noel Fisher, "Definitions of Loyalty: Unionist
Histories of the Civil War in East Tennessee," Journal ofEast Tennessee
History 67 (1995): 58-88. See also Forrest Conklin, ed., '''Parson'
Brownlow on the Impeachment of Judge Humphreys and Other Matters
in Washington, D.C.-June, 1862," East Tennessee Historical Society's
Publications 56/57 (1984/1985): 120-31.

7. Gordon B. McKinney, Southern Mountain Republicans, 1865­
1900: Politics and the Appalachian Community (Chapel Hill: Univ. of
North Carolina Press, 1978; reprint, Knoxville: Univ. ofTennessee Press,
1998); Wilson D. Miscamble, "Andrew Johnson and the Election ofWil­
Ham G. ('Parson') Brownlow as Governor ofTennessee," Tennessee His­
torical Quarterly 37 (1978): 308-20; Lonnie E. Maness, "Henry Emerson
Etheridge and the Gubernatorial Election of 1867: A Study in Futility,"
West Tennessee Historical Society Papers 47 (1993): 37-49; Kathleen
R. Zebley, "Unconditional Unionist: Samuel Mayes Amell and Recon­
struction in Tennessee," Tennessee Historical Quarterly 53 (1994): 246­
59; Forrest Conklin, "Wiping Out 'Andy' Johnson's Moccasin Tracks:
The Canvass of Northern States by Southern Radicals, 1866," Tennessee
Historical Quarterly 52 (1993): 122-33.

8. Steve Humphrey, "That D-d Brownlow": Being a Saucy and
Malicious Description ofWilliam Gannaway Brownlow . .. (Boone, N.C.:
Appalachian Consortium Press, 1978); James C. Kelly, "William
Gannaway Brownlow," Tennessee Historical Quarterly 43 (1984): 25­
43, 155-72. See also Stephen F. Humphrey, "The Man Brownlow from a
Newspaper Man's Point of View," East Tennessee Historical Society's
Publications 43 (1971): 59-70.



CHAPTER I

CRUSADING IN THE SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS

To ADMIT that one sprang from the second families of Virginia
marks a strange trait. Indeed, it may well be argued that if the
admission were publicly made and without provocation, it points
to positive idiosyncrasies. So much undoubtedly can be proved
on William Gannaway Brownlow, known to his time and to
history as the Fighting Parson. Like Abraham Lincoln, his
ancestry was the short and simple annals of the poor, but un­
like Lincoln he made a virtue out of telling it.

Brownlow's father was Joseph A. Brownlow, who was born in
Rockbridge County, Virginia in 1781. He spent his life drift­
ing down the great valleys of Southern Appalachia, and by
1816, when he died, he had reached East Tennessee. Brownlow's
mother was Catherine Gannaway, also a Virginian. This couple
had proceeded southwestward as far as a farm in Wythe County,
when their first child was born. It was on the ~9th day of August,
1805, and the child was a boy. They named him William, to do
honor to one of his father's brothers, and they added Gannaway
out of respect for his mother's family. Two brothers and two
sisters followed in rather close succession, to be his playmates.
At the age of thirty-five his father died, a victim of the hard life
of the frontiersman, and his mother, with feelings too tender for
so dire a fate, grieved much for her departed husband, and
followed him within less than three months. At the age of eleven
Andrew Johnson, later to loom large on the Brownlow horizon,
had lost only his father; Brownlow at the same age had lost both
father and mother. Though an orphan he grew strong and by
the time he became the Fighting Parson he seems to have dis­
covered how to transform vehemence into strength, for he out­
lived all of his brothers and sisters by almost two decades.!

1 For the early life and ancestry of Brownlow see, W. G. Brownlow, Sketches
of the Rue, Progres8, and Decline of Secessionj with a Narrative of Personal



~ WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW

Brownlow was born in that mountainous region below Mason
and Dixon's Line, which might well be called Southern Appa­
lachia. It is one great physiographic unit, embracing more than
100,000 square miles, and extending southward 500 miles and
more as far as northern Georgia and Alabama. Ignoring the
mighty decrees of nature, man, with his adventitious political
divisions, cut it up and parcelled it out among no less than eight
states; but the natural coherence of the people of Southern
Appalachia has stood out boldly in every great crisis which has
confronted them. Nature built this region on a plan clear and
simple. On the west is the bold Cumberland escarpment, and
on the east is the Blue Ridge, which in North Carolina and Ten­
nessee goes under the name of the Unakas and the Great Smoky
Mountains. Between lies the Great Appalachian Valley, which
is in fact various valleys running northeast and southwest. This
region, instead of being inaccessible, and hostile to man's es­
thetic tastes and his economic struggles, is kindly disposed to
both. The beauty of the smoothly formed green ridges and the
great towering peaks, and the fertility of the broad river valleys
attracted people no less in the early pIoneer days than at present.

Into these beautiful valleys came the Scotch-Irish before the
Revolutionary War,2 and so eager were they and other early
settlers to see and to seize what was further on that, without
knowing it, they passed on out of the Old Dominion and as early
as 1769 reached the Watauga and Holston valleys in the King's

Adventures among the Rebels, pp. 15-17 (This book is best known under the
binder's title, Parson B1'ownlow's Book and is thus referred to hereafter);
Portrait and Biography of Parson Brownlow, the Tennessee Patriot, Together
with his Last Ed'itorial in the Knoreville Whig; also, his recent Speeches, Rehears­
ing his Ereperience with Secession, and his Prison Life, p. 27, (referred to here­
after as Portrait and Biography); W. G. Brownlow, Helps to the Study of Pres­
byterianism or, an Unsophisticated Ereposition of Calvinism, with Hopkineian
Modifications and Policy, with a View to a more easy Interpretation of the
Same. To Which is Added a Brief Account of the Life and Travels of the Au­
thor, Interspersed 'With Anecdotes, pp. 242-43 (referred to hereafter as Helps
to the Study of Presbyterianism. The personal narrative part of this book has
been republished in S. G. Heiskell, Andrew Jackson and Early Tennessee His­
tory, III, 227-72); R. N. Price, Holston Methodism, III, 815-18; Oliver P.
Temple, Notable Men of Tennessee from 1893 to 1875, p. 818; and American
Annual Cyclopaedia, 1877, p. 79.

1I Many Germans drifted into the Shenandoah Valley.



CRUSADING IN THE SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS 8
colony of North Carolina. With characteristic frontier initia­
tive they set up a government of their own, writing out on
American soil for the first time a fundamental charter, and call­
ing it the Watauga Association. They fought the King at the
battle of Kings Mountain and later when affairs in state and
nation were not going to suit them, they showed further initia­
tive and daring by declaring themselves the independent State
of Franklin.

The spell of the frontier led people of every estate in life
to drift westward, and as they trudged along, the Great South­
ern Highlands laid first claim on them and levied its toll. In its
strategic position it stood to win some of the best as well as the
worst. It had fertile valleys which satisfied the most fastidious,
and it possessed barriers, which stopped the weaklings and shift­
less and afforded them homes which no other would accept. So
it was that some seeing the fertile lands, stopped through choice;
others suffering the breakdown of a wagon wheel, remained by
accident; and still others too poor and too weak to proceed
farther, settled down through hard necessity.

In Southern Appalachia were developing such families as
the Breckinridges, the Prestons, and the Clays who were to
move out about the beginning of the nineteenth century and
attach their names indelibly to other parts of the country. On
the edges of this region were born the J effersons and the Cal­
houns. Originating on the outside Andrew Jackson entered it,
remained for a time, and then moved on; Andrew Johnson came
to stay; David Crockett and Sam Houston were born in the
heart of Southern Appalachia, and both moved westward to cast
their lots with Texas. Admiral David G. Farragut came from
this region, and it was not by accident that he supported the
Union in the Civil War. And in the latter part of the century
Bob Taylor, born in East Tennessee, fiddled himself into the
hearts of his fellow-citizens and into the office of governor of
the state. Later his brother Alf won the same office, though
through the power of the opposite party, the Republicans. And
downward into the twentieth century Southern Appalachia has
not ceased to attract attention. It remained for a little town in



4 WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW

East Tennessee to draw upon itself the eyes of the world as it
sought to prove that a great Englishman was wrong if not sac­
rilegious when he formulated his theory of evolution.

In such a region Brownlow found himself at the age of eleven,
an orphan. He was not of the rich valley people who tilled farms
of plantation proportions, though both the Brownlows and the
Gannaways had been sufficiently well-to-do to own a few slaves.
It is also evident that there was at that time a class of people
in the out-of-the-way places who had an economic standing
lower than the Brownlows. Manifestly a boy of eleven could
do little toward feeding and clothing a family of four younger
brothers and sisters, so these five orphans were scattered among
their relatives. Billy Brownlow was sent to his Uncle John
Gannaway, and for the next seven years he worked on a farm
and earned his keep by the sweat of his brow. As the hard life
of a farmer did not appeal to him, at the age of eighteen he got
his uncle's permission to leave, and went to Abingdon, in Wash­
ington County. Here he apprenticed himself to another uncle,
George Winniford, a house-carpenter and a planter, and for
three years worked at the business of sawing planks, and build­
ing them into houses. But he was soon convinced that he was
not destined to go through life doing such things, and so decided
to get an education and become a man of some importance.

In 18~5 a camp-meeting was reported in progress at Sul­
phur Springs, twenty-five miles from Abingdon. Brownlow went
over to join the crowd, and soon found himself converted, and
then for the first time in his life was "enabled to shout aloud the
wonders of redeeming love." As he recalled the occasion a few
years later, "All my anxieties were then at an end-all my hopes
were realized--my happiness was complete."3 A sudden change
had now come over him. He quit being a carpenter, and hurried
away from Abingdon back up into Wythe County, there to have
his rude educational tools welded by William Horne into finer in­
struments. This year ended his formal schooling, but it height­
ened his insatiable desire to read and study almost every book
he could lay his hands on.

a Brownlow, Helps to the Study of Presbyterianism, pp. 248-44; Kno(l;ville
Whig, September 9, 1868.





6 WILLIAM: G. BROWNLOW

As Brownlow read, he also observed. He was soon convinced
that the quickest way to become a great man in his little world
in Southern Appalachia was to join in the great religious boom
then in progress. Not much education was needed, but a large
amount of religious fervor, excitability, and pugnacity would go
a long way, and if a ready tongue and a quick wit were added,
the combination would be complete. As Brownlow had all these
qualities in excellent proportions, he decided to join in the move­
ment. According to the law of probabilities, he should have be­
come a volunteer in the Presbyterian forces, for these crusaders
were the first to visit the back country of Virginia, in the Scotch­
Irish migrations of colonial times. The Brownlow family was
Scotch-Irish and naturally was Presbyterian, but the Ganna­
ways were Methodists and it was they who had the last word
on religious matters with Billy Brownlow before he became a
man. And then, too, the Methodist ways of doing things suited
Brownlow much better. Finally, it was a Methodist meeting
which had turned him to the Lord. So Brownlow decided to join
the l\1:ethodist movement and become a leader in the front ranks.
As the Holston Conference was scheduled to meet in Abingdon
in the fall of 1826, he planned to attend and to apply for ad­
mission into the travelling ministry. Bishop Joshua Soule pre­
sided this year, and it was he who admitted Brownlow, assigning
him to the Black Mountain Circuit, in North Carolina, an out­
post on the eastern slopes of Appalachia.

What sort of task confronted this new parson in the wilder­
ness? What had the forces of organized religion done for South­
ern Appalachia and what had been their manner of doing it?
These questions must of need be settled. It brings no profit to
anyone to be able to say truly which might have been the first
denomination to be represented in any given portion of the
great Southern Highl,ands by some wandering preacher, per­
haps, self-appointed; but it is of much importance as far as
history goes to be able to say which denomination first came in
considerable force and tended to hold the upper hand. This
strategic position fell to the Presbyterians, as before intimated,
but they were soon being hard-pressed by the l\1:ethodists and



CRUSADING IN THE .SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS 7
Baptists. The Presbyterians were in Abingdon some years be­
fore the American Revolution broke out, for Charles Cummings
went there in 177~ to serve two congregations already organized.
On down into East Tennessee they drifted; when Francis As­
bury passed through that region in 180~ he found them well
organized. The Presbyterians were the religious aristocrats in
this frontier country. They believed in education and carried
out that belief by setting up academies and colleges. In 1783
Samuel Doak set up l\:Iartin's Academy at Salem. A dozen years
later this was transformed into Washington College. Greene­
ville College was provided for in 1794, and the year 1819 saw
the beginnings of Southern and Western Theological Semi­
nary, which later became Maryville College.4

A few stray religious enthusiasts who called themselves Bap­
tists seem to have made their appearance in East Tennessee,
long before this name was applied to the region, even as early
as the Watauga settlement. The Indians demolished one of their
establishments before the Revolutionary War, but the Baptists
were back again by 1781, this time at Buffalo Ridge. Thereafter
one Baptist association followed another in a steady progression,
bearing such names as Holston, Nolichucky, Powell's Valley,
Sweetwater, Sequatchee, and Ocoee.5

Methodist men of God were in the back country almost as soon
as a settlement would spring up; their activities began in South­
west Virginia before 1783, for it was in this year that the Hol­
ston Circuit was set up. The first Conference ever to be held west
of the mountains took place in East Tennessee in l\1ay, 1788,
at a place called Half-Acres; and it was the ubiquitous Asbury
who presided. Later he passed through this region often in his
wilderness travels, and now and then Lorenzo Dow, "the crazy

"J. E. Alexander, A Brief History of the Synod of Tenne.~.~ee from 1817 to
1887, pp. 5,11,64-81; C. B. Coale, The Life and Adventures of William Waters,
the FamO'US Hunter and Trapper of lVhite Top Mountain, embracing Early
History of Southwestern Virginia, Sufferings of the Pioneers, etc. etc. pp. 246­
58; W. T. Hale and D. L. Merritt, A History of Tennessee and Tennesseeans,
p. 223; Journal of Rev. Francis Asbury, III, 87; L. S. Merriam, Higher Education
in Tennessee, p. 63.

II David Benedict, .A General History of the Baptist Denomination in America
and other Parts of the World.



8 WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW

preacher," came this way. Soon the Methodists were setting up
their circuits throughout all Southern Appalachia. As for
schools and colleges, the followers of John 'Vesley were not
quite sure that such man-made institutions might not afford easy
ways for wasting money. And at this time the feeling was not
completely dispelled from among them that a Methodist preach­
er :Reeded no more education than that with which the Lord had
endowed him. Yet in 1831 they founded Holston Seminary at
New l\{arket, in East Tennessee, and falling into the habits of
the times, they soon changed it into a manual training school.
In 1836 the Holston Conference succeeded in founding a college
which they had been contemplating for four years. At first they
decided to locate it at Strawberry Plains, in East Tennessee, but
their final decision was to go to Washington County, in South­
west Virginia. This institution developed into Emory and Henry
College.6

Carrying religion to the frontier was beset with almost as
many dangers and inconveniences as dogged the steps of the
Crusaders in the Holy Land. The Methodist circuit-rider was
in the forefront; the Baptist itinerant was not far behind; the
Presbyterians, ~hi1e generally early on the field, enjoyed more
security back of the lines. The frontier preacher, though little
educated, was tremendously serious; indeed, his zeal often went
in inverse proportion to his learning. Hunting souls was to
some adventuresome frontiersmen much the same as hunting
bears might be to others. There was much the same sort of sport
for both, although the soul hunter might not always recognize
it. Each made a living, and neither grew wealthy. The Methodist
circuit-rider was allowed about $80 a year if he could find means
for getting it, and in computing this amount, gifts of food and
raiment and fees for marrying couples were included. lIe was
urged to remain single as long as he was on the circuit, and if
he felt he must marry he was urged to "locate," in order to sup­
plement his income from other means than preaching. Old Peter

6 J. B. McFerrin, History of 'j{ethodi,'1m in Tennessee; W. W. Sweet, The Rise
of Methodism in the West, p. 15; Journal of Francis Asbury, II, 33; Coale, op.
cit., pp. 205-8, 246-58; Brownlow, Helps to the Study of Presbyterianism, pp.
284-85.



CRUSADING IN THE SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS 9
Cartwright, who knew well the business of circuit-riding, ob­
served, "But the Lord provided; and, strange as it may appear
to the present generation, we got along without starving, or
going naked."7

The circuit-rider's equipment generally consisted of a horse,
a bridle, a saddle, and saddle-bags. Among the contents of his
saddle-bags were a Bible, and perhaps occasionally a copy of
Milton's works. The latter was valuable for descriptions of hell­
fire; the former must be a constant companion, for the Bible
should be continuously studied in order that the sinner might be
the more easily refuted. And furthermore a frontier preacher
would be forever disgraced among his fellows if he were ever
caught off guard to the extent that he could not preach a sermon
at the shortest notice on any given passage in the Bible. Ezek.
1 :16 reads, "The appearance of the wheels and their work was
like unto the colour of a beryl: and they four had one likeness:
and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in
the middle of a wheel." This difficult passage led a Presbyterian
preacher to construct a sermon which he called "A Wheel With­
in a Wheel," and which he liked so well that he had it printed
in the Calvanistic Magazine, an East Tennessee publication.s

Once a Methodist bishop exhibited his learning by beginning
his sermon in this wise, "My beloved hearers, I shall in the first
place speak to you of the things which you know; second, of what
I know, and you do not know; third, of the things that neither
of us know.,,9

The frontier man of God was a hard rider, a hard preacher,
and a hard liver. One who knew the Methodist itineracy in its
greatest vigor declared that

it had no ruffles or lawn sleeves that it cared to soil, no love-locks
that it feared to disorder, no buckles it was loath to tarnish. It
lodged roughly, and it fared scantily. It tramped up muddy ridges,

., w. P. Strickland, ed., Autobiography of Peter Oartwright, the Back'tl1ood,
Preacher, pp. 521-22; William Henry Milburn, Ten Years of Preacher Life;
Ohapters from an Autobiography, pp. S47-88.

S Vol. III, No.7 (July, 1829), pp. 199-213. This magazine was started in Jan­
uary, 1827, in Rogersville, in East Tennessee, by James Gallaher, Frederick A.
Ross, and David Nelson. See also Milburn, op. cit., pp. 365-66.

• Ibid., p. 868.



10 WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW

it swam or forded rivers to the waist; it slept on leaves or raw
deer-skin, and pillowed its head on saddle-bags; it bivouacked
among wolves or Indians; now it suffered from ticks or mosquitoes
-it was attacked by dogs, it was hooted, and it was pelted-but
it throve. tO

He threaded his way through the wilderness with a Bible
in one hand and a sword in the other. He might have had im­
perfect notions of the universe outside of Southern Appalachia,
but he was, seriously going about the task which he knew it was
his duty to perform. His language was fiery and direct, for he
knew he had a great issue to settle every time he preached. He
had the conviction that there were souls in his audience which
if not saved then would go down to eternal damnation before he
should return. An East Tennessee religious publication excited­
ly declared, "With unspeakable distress we have heard of the
alarming prevalence and wide-spread ravages of moral death
in one of the western counties of Virginia." A runner had but
recently arrived and told "with streaming eyes of the ruin which
appears to hang over the people."!t

The earliest preachers of course found no meeting-houses, so
they preached under some large tree or on the doorstep of some
willing convert. Bishop Asbury came through East Tennessee
in the fall of 180~ and reported that he "had sacrament and love
feast in the woods."!2 The lack of meeting-houses and the strange
religious outburst that swept over the whole western frontier
at the break of the nineteenth century, led to the camp-meetings
which were held out in the midst of the forest. The Great Revival
seems to have had its earliest and most intense manifestations
beyond the mountains out in Kentucky, but some of the strang­
est outbursts first appeared in East Tennessee. People for miles
around went to these meetings in almost unbelievable numbers
for where else could they go and what else was there to draw
them together, unless it were the tricks of a politician? Bishop
Asbury attended a camp-meeting in 180~ near Jonesboro. It

10 Wm. W. Wightman, Life of William Caper.." D.D., one of the Bishops of the
Methodist Episcopal Church South; including an Autobiography, pp. 471-72.

11 Calvini..,tic Magazine, vol. I, no. 1 (January, 1827), p. 29.
12 Journal of Francis Asbury, III, 87.



CRUSADING IN THE SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS 11
lasted for four days and drew a modest crowd of about 1,500
people. According to his account, "We had a shaking, and some
souls felt convicting and converting grace."13 But it remained
for "crazy Dow," who debouched from Buncombe County, in
North Carolina, down the French Broad River, the next year,
to discover and report on happenings strange even to the early
frontier preacher. He had heard "about a singularity called the
jerks or jerking exercise, which appeared first near Knoxville
in August last, to the great alarm of the people...." At first he
considered the report "vague and false," but "at length, like
the Queen of Sheba" he set out to see for himself. He was soon
in the midst of things and saw remarkable sights. The afflicted
threw their heads to and fro hurriedly, at the same time jerking
furiously in every limb. At one of the camp-meetings, he saw
jerking-saplings, "where the people had laid hold of them and
jerked so powerfully that they had kicked up the earth as a
horse stamping Hies." Peter Cartwright knew much about jerk­
ing. He had had as many as five hundred people at one time
jerking in his congregations. According to him the bonnets,
hats, and combs of the women would Hy off, and so violently
did their heads snap back and forth that "their long hair cracked
almost as loudly as a wagoner's whip." The Lord smote the
people of this wilderness in other strange fashions. People ran
hurriedly to and fro on the camp grounds and in the tabernacle
under the trees; some lay prostrate in beds of straw; others with
Hays hurried out into the forests and whipped the trees as if
they were chasing and chastising the devil; some went through
the motions of playing the fiddle or sewing; and some went into
the holy dance. Dow visited a camp-meeting across the line in
Virginia where he heard a great pandemonium of the wicked
break out, as they were smitten by the Lord. One preacher had
used up his strength in exhorting the multitude and then an­
other "began to exhort, when there commenced a trembling
among the wicked; one, a second, and a third fell from their
seats and the cry for mercy became general ... and for eleven
hours there was no cessation of the loud cries." The Quakers in

18 Ibid., p. 86.



12 WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW

East Tennessee did not seem to engage in these antics, but Dow
found a sect of them "who do not feel free to wear colored
clothes."14

These holy demonstrations gradually began to degenerate,
in the eyes of some of the preachers, into gigantic frolics and
horse-play performances, and the whole system of camp-meet­
ings soon came in for condemnation. Lorenzo Dow declared
that he had heard a preacher produce "ten passages of Scrip­
ture to prove that dancing was once a religious exercise, but
corrupted at Aaron's calf, and from thence young people got
it for amusement." But the camp-meeting was destined to out­
last all its critics, even into the dawn of the twentieth century.
It became one of the fixed institutions in Southern Appalachia,
serving not only the religious group but also the irreligious ele­
ment. The announcement of a camp-meeting brought glee to
the hearts of all the bullies, drunkards, pickpockets, horse­
traders, horse-thieves, and whiskey-traffickers throughout all
the surrounding country. To preserve order was no easy task,
but in the performance of this function, some of the best preach­
ers developed into some of the most proficient fighters. Virile old
Peter Cartwright, in his western vineyard, stood equally ready
to instill the fear of God into his hearers through a sermon or
by wielding a club. Once with a club he knocked a rowdy off'
his horse, seized him, took him before a justice of the peace and
had him fined $50. On another occasion he seized the whiskey
supply of a bunch of disturbers and drove them off' the camp­
ground with a barrage of stones. When in the midst of his ser­
mon a woman disturbed the meeting by kicking her converted
daughters, he tripped her up and threw her sprawling among
the congregation, continuing his discourse as if nothing had
happened. Now and then he worked such strategems on the hood-

U T. W. Humes, The Loyal Mountaineers of Tenneuee, pp. 839-41; Perambula­
tions of Oosmopolite; or Travels and Labors of Lorenzo Dow in Europe and
America, pp. 132-33; The Dealings of God, Man, and the Devil; as Eir:emplijied
in the Life, Expe1'ience, and Travels of Lorenzo Dow, in a Period of over Half a
Oentury; together with his Polemic and MiscellaneOUJl Writings. Oomplete. To
'which is added the Vicissitudes of Life, by Peggy Dow, Y, 27, 85 (referred to
hereafter as Dealings of God, Man, and the Devil). Abel Stevens, History of
the Methodist Episcopal Ohurch of the United States of America, IV, 4S.~.



CRUSADING IN THE SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS 18
lums as playing on the vanity of their leader by appointing him
peace officer and thereby turning him against his own gang, and
by centering his heavenly artillery on the gang leader and sub­
duing him. Parson Cartwright's creed was "to love everybody,
but to fear no one," and he added, "I did not permit myself to
believe any man could whip me till it was tried." A gentle Bap­
tist itinerant in the Big Sandy Valley of Eastern Kentucky, by
the use of his fiddle, tamed the spirit of the rowdies that might
otherwise have disturbed him. lIS

To say that these fiery champions of the Lord should fight
only gangsters would leave unnoticed some of their greatest
battles. In this great arena of Southern Appalachia there were
three bands of gladiators-the Methodists, the Baptists, and
the Presbyterians-contesting for the souls of the people. Fights
waxed as hot among these three groups as ever th~y did between
preacher and rowdy. The general tendency was for the two Cal­
vinistic groups, the Baptists and the Presbyterians, to join
the fray against the Methodists. This union of forces was en­
couraged by the fact that the Methodists appeared to each of
the other denominations to be the most dangerous rival. Meth­
odism was a frontier religion, made so by the chief characteris­
tics of its doctrines and by the nature of the frontiersmen.
Among the cardinal principles of Methodism were free will,
free grace, and individual responsibility. These ideas worked in
definite harmony with frontier democracy. Such Calvinistic
doctrines as predestination and foreordination could have little
appeal to a headstrong son of the frontier, who wanted and
would have his own way, in this world if not hereafter. So, con­
tentions and disputes grew up in which there was none too lowly
to participate and none too high. At the very time Brownlow
hecame a parson, a war against l\fethodism was raging, with
Nathan Bangs and John Emory boldly fighting the battles for
,John Wesley. Although one of the most historic fights against
Methodists in Southern Appalachia was carried on by a Pres­
byterian, the Baptists developed the more intense rivalry with the

11 Milburn, op. cit., pp. 383-84; W. R. Jillson, The Big Sand!1 ValleJI. A Regional
llistory Prior to the Year 1850, pp. 105-6; Strickland, op. cit., p. 138.



14 WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW

Methodists and engaged in the greater number of battles.
Jacob Young, a Methodist preacher, experienced much

trouble in organizing a circuit until he was able to dispel the
feeling of the people that he was a Baptist. On one occasion,
as darkness was fast approaching, he spied a cabin in the midst
of the forest. He approached and asked the woman in the door­
way whether he might spend the night. She was on the point of
turning him away as a roving Baptist, when he explained that
he was a Methodist. Thereupon she exclaimed, "La me! has a
Methodist preacher come at last? Yes, brother, you shall stay
all night."16 The point of difference between the Methodists and
Baptists that produced the greatest amount of disputing was
the question of baptism. So many revivals had been held in the
Clinch Circuit and the people had been preached to so much
that they had become "very superstitious in their notions-look­
ing for miracles and things out of the common order. They ex­
pected for God to tell them everything that they ought to do."
According to the Reverend Mr. Young,

A class-leader became dissatisfied with the baptism he received
when he was an infant, and began to think he ought to be baptized
by immersion; he talked to the preachers and to the brethren, but
concluded he would lay it before the Lord. One morning he arose
early and went upon the mountain, and continued in prayer until
late in the afternoon. But before sundown, the family heard him
crying at the top of his voice, and he came down from the mountain,
in full speed, crying, "Baptism, baptism, baptism, by immersion!"
He thought he had received the revelation right from heaven; others
thought so too, and away they went and were immersed-then they
felt that all was well.17

Often Methodist and Baptist ministers interrupted each other
in their meetings and now and then meetings were broken up
by the indignant enemy. On one occasion a Baptist cried out
in a Methodist service, "Sir, you have preached lies this day,

18 Autobiography of a Pioneer: or, the Nativity, Experience, Travels, and
:lI-linisterial Labors of Rev. Jacob Young with Incidents, Observations, and Re­
flections, p. 83.

11 Ibid., pp. 126-27.



CRUSADING IN THE SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS 15
and 1 can prove it from the word of God."ls The congregation
dispersed in riotous disorder. But the Methodists were not
above taking the offensive. A Baptist, after bitterly castigating
a Methodist, called upon anyone in his audience to deny the truth
of his charges. Peter Cartwright arose and assailed him so mer­
cilessly that he fled from the house. Then, according to Cart­
wright's account, "I ordered him to stop, and told him, if he
did not, 1 would shoot him in the back for a tory; he got out at
the door. He was taken so at surprise, and charged on so sud­
denly, that he forgot his hat, and he peepEd around the door­
chink at me. 1 blazed away at him till he dodged back, and
started off, bare-headed, for home, talking to himself by the
way."19 Parson Cartwright was greatly annoyed by the prose­
lyting Baptists who came across his trail, and he solemnly laid
this charge against them:

It was the order of the day (though I am sorry to say it), that
we were constantly followed by a certain set of proselyting Bap­
tist preachers. These new and wicked settlements [in the upper
Cumberland River region] were seldom visited by these Baptist
preachers until the Methodist preachers entered them; then, when
a revival was gotten up, or the work of God revived, these Baptist
preachers came rushing in and they generally sung their sermons;
and when they struck the long roll, or their sing-song mode of
preaching, in substance it was "water! water! You must follow
your blessed Lord down into the water!" ... indeed, they made
so much ado about baptism by immersion, that the uninformed
would suppose that heaven was an island, and there was no way
to get there but by diving or swimming.20

The Presbyterians, less given to roving up and down the
wilderness, carried on their warfare in the more dignified printed
page. So they were answered likewise. Cartwright, equally ver­
satile as a pamphleteer or a verbal antagonist, hurled against
them such compositions as these, "A Useful Discovery: or I

18 Ibid., p. 80.
19 Strickland, op. cit'J p. 136. This incident took place in the Cumberland River

region in 1813.
... Ibid.J pp. 133-34.



16 WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW

Never Sa.w the Like Before," "The Dagon of Calvinism," and
"The History of the Devil," and "Crazy Dow" entered the
pamphleteer's arena against them with his "Chain."21

The ministers of Southern Appalachia had all the frailties
of the rough frontiersmen among whom they worked. They
suffered all the hardships that befell frontiersmen, but they
bore them with joy for in their unshaken faith they knew they
were performing the task the Lord had set for them. Had they
not been combative in disposition they would never have secured
a hearing or a following. People went to their meetings to be
entertained, and many came 'away converted. When civilizing
influences had softened the hard forces of nature and had tamed
the savage disposition of man, the preachers, no longer having
rivers to swim and rowdies to whip, intensified the warfare
among themselves. Mankind is endowed with an irreducible min­
imum of piety which always promotes true religion, but churches
have never depended on this fact alone.22 As time went on, edu­
cation and social standing were beginning to develop into re­
ligious assets, but stirring up prejudice and antagonism against
the other sects was long to be a powerful weapon wielded by the
preacher-warriors in Southern Appalachia.

llI. W. S. Hooper, ed., Fifly Years as a Presiding Elder by Rev. Peter Cart­
wright, pp. 92 fT.

llII Controversy was nothing new in the development and spread of religious
sects. It has played so consistent a part in history that it might well be considered
the normal. Methodism was ushered into America in the midst of a dispute be­
tween George Whitefield and John Wesley. New England was being torn asunder
by her bitter religious contentions, while Southern Appalachia was yet the peace­
ful home of the Cherokees.



CHAPTER II

A NEW PARSON RIDES THE CIRCUIT

BISHOP JOSHUA SOULE sent young Brownlow to one of the
roughest and most inaccessible parts of all Southern Appala­
chia. The Holston Conference, in which Brownlow was to carry
on his circuit-riding for the next ten years, was laid out with
no regard at all for state lines; it embraced parts of Virginia,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, and
the Parson on horseback carried his message into everyone of
these states before he was finally allowed to locate. The Confer­
ence was composed of five districts, Abingdon, French Broad,
Knoxville, Hiwassee and Asheville, and the districts were made
up of varying numbers of circuits. In that part of the Confer­
ence where the long ridges prevailed, the circuit was more likely
than not to be made up of a single valley, as the Clinch Circuit,
which at one time was simply the Powell River Valley, 150 miles
long and ~5 miles wide. But the Black Mountain Circuit, in the
Asheville District, where Brownlow was sent, lay far over in
North Carolina on the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge where
the mountains were jumbled and piled so high that they formed
the roof of eastern North America.

According to the custom, he was taken on trial, and indeed
if he should succeed in cultivating the Lord's vineyard in such
a region as this, he should soon well deserve the full connection
that each circuit-rider expected after two years. Into this region
in the fall of 18~6 came the twenty-one-year-old Parson, stretch­
ing upwards to the extent of about six feet, with sharp features,
glaring eyes, and a determination written in his countenance that
might mean defiance, fright, or fanaticism. If Joshua Soule had
hoped to scare him out of the Methodist ministry by starting
him off in such a place as the Black Mountain Circuit, the Bishop
was much mistaken. The look in his face that some might have



18 WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW

interpreted as fright was in fact the quintessence of defiance and
fanaticism. He seems never to have developed fear of anything
throughout his long life. Yet there was hidden in his being a
romantic love for nature in her most heroic moods. Instead of
running from these rough mountains and swift torrents, he
thought they were exquisitely beautiful. He signalized the day
following his first Christmas as a circuit-rider by nearly freezing
to death on Cane River. As for his vineyard, "There are few
places in the world which can vie with the counties of Buncombe
and Burke, in beauty and novelty of scenery-the extended
hill-side fields, rich ridges, beautiful springs, mountain coves,
high conical peaks, and astonishing verdure covering the soil,
set off to the best advantage, the lofty Black Mountain." He
was also greatly attracted by Table Rock, a great jumping-off
place into the Piedmont region, which extended through Burke
County to the eastward. l

If there was romanticism in the Parson which his countenance
did not show, there was a vast amount of fanatical zeal that
showed in every lineament. The Baptists soon brought this
characteristic into play. He had never come into contact with
this sect before entering the Black Mountain region, but here
he soon ran afoul of them, for they resented his activities and
opposed him with much bitterness. He found them exceedingly
bigoted and narrow and possessed of the certain feeling that
they were the only ones who held a claim on "the bounty of the
skies." He ran into one of their meetings where they were en­
gaged in the religious observance of foot-washing and he ob­
served, "never did I, before or since, see as many big dirty feet,
washed in one large pewter basin full of water !"2

The next year he was moved back toward Tennessee to the
French Broad Circuit, still in the Asheville District, but before
the year was out he was sent to the Maryville Circuit in East
Tennessee for three months, and then transferred again back
into Buncombe County. While out in the Maryville region he
had his first skirmish with the Presbyterians, who were very

1 Brownlow, Help, to the 8tudy of Pre,bytenanum, p. 245; Autobiography of
a Pioneer, pp. 106-27.

I Brownlow, B"p, to the 8tud, of Pr6loyterianilm, p. 244.



A NEW PARSON RIDES THE cmCUIT 19
strong in that vicinity. He complained of being continuously
pursued by a little Calvinistic upstart who made no end of pes­
tering him about such subjects as moral inability and the im­
possibility of falling from grace. He attended a meeting, where
a Presbyterian was trying to describe the comical dress of a
Methodist preacher. With a great bluster Brownlow stood up
and asked the audience to look for themselves. This unexpected
move threw the meeting into an uproar. By such acts Brownlow
was becoming known and getting talked about far and wide.
While in Knoxville one day he ran up on a Presbyterian min­
ister enjoying much fun in a movement he had launched to raise
money for having Brownlow's picture painted. This promoter
asked Brownlow for a subscription, whereupon the Parson
quickly replied that he would contribute if it were set up "as a
pattern for minister-making." By this time Brownlow had dis­
covered that his ugliness, which he never denied, served only to
spread his name and reputation farther. This year he also had
his brushes with the Baptists again, and when he heard them
ridiculing and reviling the Methodists he rose up in their meet­
ings and denounced and confused them. He declared the Bap­
tist ministers were very quarrelsome even among themselves,
that they often fought over a division of the money in the collec­
tion plate.

Amidst all his contentions with the Calvinists, he found time to
admire the beauty of nature and to try his powers of description
upon it. How beautiful it was in the summer! "But 0, the huge,
enormous mountains! the steep and dizzy precipices; the pend­
ant horrors of the craggy promontories-how wild and awful
they look of a rainy evening !"3

At length another year rolled by and Brownlow prepared to
attend the Annual Conference, which met this year at J ones­
boro, across the line in East Tennessee; and Bishop Joshua
Soule was to preside again. In his mind he revolved this leave­
taking of his beloved mountains, "Adieu to those scenes, till the
last loud trump of God shall sound; and until eruptions, earth­
quakes, comets, and lightnings, disgorge their blazing maga-

lJ Ibid., pp. 246-48.



flO WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW

zines!" Soule seems to have approved of his underling's contest
with the Presbyterians and the Baptists, for the Parson noted
with much pleasure that the Bishop in a sermon at the Confer­
ence "certainly tore the very hindsite off of Calvinism!" This
year the Parson was sent on his way into southeast Tennessee
to the Washington Circuit in the Washington District. In this
region he let his zeal for disputing run riot to such an extent
that he soon found himself in the midst of a slander suit, which
he, however, succeeded in getting dismissed. Here he also made
another discovery. For the first time he now ran into a sect called
the Cumberland Presbyterians, a group who had broken away
from the regular Presbyterian Church out in Kentucky in 1810
because they believed the latter required too much education
for those seeking to enter the ministry.4 He found their chief
activities to be proselyting from the other churches and preach­
ing long sermons. He declared, "I do not recollect to have ever
heard more than one who closed till he was completely out of
strength, words, and ideas!" He also observed that he did not
believe in long sermons and that no sermon should be longer
than an hour, for "of all the deaths that ever any people died,
there is none so distressing as that of being preached to death !'''~

This observation he soon forgot.
The Parson seems to have had a great deal of curiosity in his

make-up. Down in southeastern Tennessee he was in the former
home of the Cherokee Indians, and not far removed from their
abode at that time. He decided to make them a visit to see how
they looked, how they lived, and what their religion was like. At
this time Georgia was having trouble with her unwelcome red­
men, so Brownlow decided to carry out his visiting in Alabama.
Since he had an uncle living near Muscle Shoals, on the Ten­
nessee River, he first went there and then traveled through the
Cherokee nation. He found those Indians who were not savages
to be good Methodists, and he heard an excellent prayer deliv­
ered by Turtlefields, one of their preachers.6

40 For an account of the rise of this sect see Lewis and R. H. Collins, History of
Kentucky, I, 438--36.

II Brownlow, Helps to the Study of Presbyterianism, pp. 249-51.
II Ibid., pp. 251-52.



A NEW PARSON RIDES THE CIRCUIT fll
In 18fl9 the Holston Conference met in Abingdon, Virginia.

Though he remained in the same district as formerly, Brown­
low was transferred to the Athens Circuit. While on this circuit,
the Parson succeeded so well in his work that his enemies named
a dog for him. He also got himself involved in a newspaper
controversy.7

Brownlow as a crusader seemed to suit the Methodists, for
in 18fl9 he was admitted into full connection, and the next year
he was given elder's orders. This year the Annual Conference
met at Ebenezer in Greene County, Tennessee, attended by the
two bishops, William M'Kendree and Joshua Soule. The latter
presided, and sent Brownlow this year to the Tellico Circuit
in the Hiwassee region of Tennessee. Here the Parson ran into
an eddy of that disturbance which was sweeping over the coun­
try under the name of Anti-Masonic movement. He heard a
great deal of talk about Masonry, but since he was not quite
able to gain from the outside a knowledge of just what it was,
he decided to exercise a bit of self-restraint and not preach a
sermon against it. But here and elsewhere he was to run into a
species of quacks, which he felt quite sure he did understand,
and he thundered out against them with all his vehemence. They
were the so-called steam doctors, who carried around a concoc­
tion which they gave for all ailments.s

The Parson traveled over Southern Appalachia more or less
according to the laws of a cyclone. He had a daily motion
inside the circuit and a great circular forward movement, on
which he advanced each year by the aid of Bishop Soule. He
began in the eastern confines of the Holston Conference in
North Carolina and receded westward down the French Broad
River into East Tennessee and then southwest into the south­
east corner of Tennessee, only to be pushed back eastward
toward the place of his beginning. At the 1831 Conference he
was sent to the Franklin Circuit, which lay around about the
three-state corner, where North Carolina, South Carolina, and
Georgia touched one another. This year he made three tours
through the southeastern ramparts of the Southern Highlands,

7 Ibid., pp. 252-5-1.
8 Ibid., pp. 256, 281-82.



22 WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW

the "Taxaway Mountains" as he chose to denominate them, and
he later marvelled that he did not lose his life.

He found this region infested with Baptists and he adjudged
them as pestiferous as ever. They were always shouting "water!
... as if the Saviour of mankind were a pennywinkle, and could
only be found hanging to a sand-stone, in the bottom of some
water course!" One of them, named Humphrey Posey, he en­
dured as long as he could, and he finally took the offensive
and accused Posey of selling Bibles which he was being paid to
give away free. Parson Posey denied the charges and indicted
Brownlow for libel. Brownlow had been rather bold to act as he
did in this Baptist community, and he should have expected
the decision which the court handed down. The case was tried at
Franklin, in Macon County, North Carolina. According to
Brownlow the judge was "corrupt and drunken," and even
worse, a Baptist, so he fined Brownlow $5 and the costs. The
Parson felt able to pay the $5 and he reckoned the costs to be
negligible, so he went about his·business of preaching, worrying
none about the court's decision. But one Sunday morning while
he was in the midst of a meeting, "a corrupt and inexperienced
deputy sheriff," with a bill of exhorbitant costs, run up by a
great horde of Baptist witnesses who had been summoned with­
out Brownlow's knowledge, levied upon all the Parson's avail­
able worldly possessions and seized them-"an elegant dun mare,
saddle, bridle, saddle-bags, and umbrella." This trick rankled
deep in Brownlow's soul, and he never forgot it. He declared this
trial and the subsequent proceedings to be an outrageous
travesty on justice, the like of which had never disgraced the
annals of mankind since the trial of William Penn at Old Bailey,
excepting possibly the persecutions of John Wesley at Savan­
nah, and of Lorenzo Dow at Charleston.9

Twenty years later the Parson took an inventory of the
"wicked crew" who had done this deed to him, and to his great
delight he found just what he expected: The judge had died
"in a drunken fit of debauch"; Parson Posey had before his

II Ibid., pp. 257, 259, 261, 269-72; J. P. Arthur, WeBtern North Oarolina, A
Hillory; MSS Archives of Macon County, I<'ranklin, N. C.



A NEW PARSON RIDES THE CIRCUIT ~8

earthly departure, turned into "a wretched and raving maniac";
one of the jurors "died, drunk in the woods"; another was serv­
ing a sentence in the penitentiary for store-breaking; another
had fled the country to escape prosecution for forgery; and
still another guilty of perjury was in hiding to escape just
punishment. As for the remainder of these corrupt jurors, he
had not heard from them for a time, "but the probability is,
the Devil has those of them, who have departed this life, while
the living ones are likely in some state prison!" Thus, had the
Lord finally vindicated the name of one of His chief circuit­
riding parsons.10

But unjust trials and court decisions could never stop Par­
son Brownlow or dampen his ardor for carrying Methodism
to the people. The year 1833 became historic on account of a
strange manifestation of nature so unusual that the tradition
concerning it has lasted down to the present generation, even
among the unlettered in the most out-of-the-way places. This
was "the year the stars fell." This beautiful display of comets
produced great excitement in the Southern Highlands and led
the more curious to seek explanations. Some of the Baptists
soon guessed that this had been a sign placed in the heavens
to indicate the downfall of the Methodists, but one Hopkinsian
lady had what she considered a more plausible explanation. She
had heard that Parson Brownlow had died, and in some way
had squeezed into heaven, and on his entry he had created such
a disturbance that he was put out. But this ejection in being
accomplished had jarred loose from their moorings all the stars
which came tumbling headlong to earth.ll

The Annual Conference in 1882 was held in Evensham, Vir­
ginia, presided over by Bishop John Emory. The Bishop shifted
Brownlow slightly to the southeast to the Tugaloo Circuit,
which lay mostly in Pickens District, South Carolina, but partly
in Georgia. The Parson was soon convinced that he could do
very little good here since the whole region was "overrun with
Baptists." Nevertheless he was determined to try. He swam the

10 KnoZ'Dille Whig and Independent Journal, July 5, 1851.
11 Brownlow, Helps to the Study of Presbyterianism, pp. 276-77.







se4 WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW

Tugaloo River four times in "the dead of winter" and preached
more than once with his wet clothes frozen stiff about him.
Once he was nearly swept over the shools and "was in a squirrel's
jump of the good world." But over in the Georgia part of his
kingdom he saw something which delighted his nature-loving
soul; it was the "Telulee Falls."12 Never had he "witnessed a
scene which struck my mind with such profound awe, and so
completely filled me with admiration of the infinite skill of the
great Architect of nature." It was the general report that they
were more grand than Niagara. He could scarcely describe the
effect they had upon him, but it seemed to him after looking at
them for a while that he felt a desire to reach the eternal world
to see the Maker of such a wonderful work of nature.1S

While on the Tugaloo Circuit in Pickens and Anderson dis­
tricts, Brownlow came as near the lowlands of the slaveholding
planters as he had ever before approached; he was 'on the verge
of running out of his beloved mountains. He would naturally
look with misgiving upon these aristocrats, but the time of his
arrival was most unpropitious for the planters. They were in
the midst of their Nullification Movement, and Brownlow im­
mediately turned away with loathing detestation. He was a
Unionist; he had ridden the circuit in five states and had not
got out of the Holston Conference of the Methodist Church in
doing it. He loved all these states equally well, scarcely knowing
or caring when he passed from one into another. If South Caro­
lina should successfully defy the United States Government
she might break up the Union and the Holston Conference with
it. He bitterly opposed this heresy, and years later declared
that the movement had been engineered by the descendants of
the Tories of the Revolution. He charged that more Tories
had lived in South Carolina "than in all the other States put
together." The Parson was not surprised to find that all the
Presbyterians and Baptists were Nullifiers and that they were
boldly announcing that Christ was a Nullifier. The insignia

13 Nature was, indeed, in a grand mood at Tallulah Falls; but twentieth cen­
tury Georgians, having more shriveled souls than the Parson, destroyed this
beautiful cataract, turning its wasted power into electricity.

13 Brownlow, Helps to the Study of Presbyterianism, pp. 268-69.



A NEW PARSON RIDES THE CIRCUIT 25
of the Nullifiers was a blue cockade. To help along the cause
the Parson aided some Unionists in pinning these cockades on
the tails of the worthless curs of the neighborhood that they
might carry high Nullification. Starved out by the Nullifiers,
Brownlow was glad to retreat back into the Union-loving moun­
tain region, but before going, according to his word, he took
a parting shot at them in a pamphlet, for which, he claimed,
they tried to hang him.14

The government of the Methodist Church provided for the
governmental meetings known as "conferences"-(l) a quar­
terly conference in each district, (2) an annual conference in
each regional division, which embraces a number of districts
and which as a region is called a conference, and (3) a quadren­
nial conference embracing all the regional divisions, or confer­
ences, in the whole United States. These meetings gave the min­
isters a chance to show themselves to their fellows, they gave
more tone and respectability to the backwoods circuit riders,
and they afforded a chance for the play of ambition for future
preferment. It fell within Brownlow's easy reach to attend the
quarterly and annual conferences, and through the very nature
of his irrepressible self he became well-known at these meetings
within the annual Holston Conference, and succeeded in get­
ting this group to appoint him a delegate to the General Con­
ference to meet in Philadelphia in 1832. Here was a glorious
opportunity to see what the big world outside of Southern
Appalachia looked like. The Conference no doubt thought that
if Brownlow should ever become properly tamed he might de­
velop into a mighty man in Methodism, whose influence would
extend far beyond the Holston Conference. In doing this elon­
gated mountaineer of only twenty-seven years so high an honor
they sought indirectly to tame him, but at the same time they
were direct and frank with him. They mildly condemned him
for his caustic style of writing in the newspaper controversies
he got into and for his wild and unbridled manner of opposing

H Ibid., pp. 265-66; Parson Brownlow's Book, pp. 21-23. I have never been
able to discover a copy of this pamphlet or to see a reference to it except in
Brownlow's claim. According to the Parson his pamphlet contained 70 pages
and was entitled, Suffering of Union ]len. See Portrait and Biography, p. 44..



!!6 WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW

the other denominations. This condemnation was not made
greater than the Parson could bear, for his very condemners
were guilty more or less of the same oft'enses.15

In the spring of 183~ the Parson quit for a time his riding
around in circles and set out on a bee line for Philadelphia,
more than six hundred miles away. He started early enough to
stop on the way, to see the sights. His first great objective was
Washington. He spent a week at his country's capital, viewing
the sprawling muddy town, and listening to the oratory of con­
gressmen. Being quite an important man himself, he decided
to pay a visit to Andrew Jackson, in the White House. Two Ten­
nesseeans so far away from home ought to be mutually glad to
see each other. Brownlow seemed to be duly impressed with the
height of Jackson, and he thought perhaps for that reason that
he was "a very fine looking old man"-but he left with the feel­
ing that he could not quite approve of the President. The Par­
son, being a Whig in the making, had never voted for Jackson,
so perforce he could never approve of such a person. Having
turned his thumbs down on the first citizen of the land, Brown­
low continued his journey on to Baltimore where he again busied
himself looking at the sights. He was attracted by the peni­
tentiary, and on seeing so many people who could not run away,
he immediately asked permission to preach to them. He slyly
contrived to get the report carried back to his enemies in Ten­
nessee that he was in the penitentiary in Baltimore-a fate they
had long been predicting and hoping for.

At last he arrived in Philadelphia where he spent the whole
month of May. He likely found more sights here than at any
other place he had visited, and without a doubt he himself was
a sight for many of his more urbane brothers in Methodism.
When not sitting with his own Conference or viewing other
o1:Jjects of interest, he slipped over to the Presbyterian Assem­
bly, which happened to be meeting in the same city. Of course,
nothing good could come from Presbyterians nor would looking
at them and listening to them aft'ord anything more than amuse-

16 Price, op. cit., III, 316, 318; Journals of the General Conference of the
Jfethodist Epucopal Church, 1,362.



A NEW PARSON RIDES THE CIRCUIT 27
ment. He heard wrangles among them "which would, for intem­
perance of language and wholesale abuse of private character,
absolutely disgrace the lowest porter house, or ale cellar, in the
lowest place in the lowest town or city in the lowest country in
the world." The Parson took an extremely inconspicuous part
in his own Conference. There is no record in the minutes of his
having introduced a motion or seconded one or even spoken a
word. He was appointed on no committees. Perhaps Bishop
Soule, who presided much of the time, had suppressed Brownlow
-or could he possibly have been awed by this august body? His
only accomplishment in the Conference, which he ever men­
tioned, and later regretted, was his aid in getting James O.
Andrew elected bishop.16

After the Parson had seen Washington, Baltimore, and Phila­
delphia, it might well be guessed that his circuit-riding days
would soon come to an end; and, indeed, he was destined to ride
only three more circuits-the Dandridge, around the confluence
of the Holston and French Broad rivers; the Scott, in South­
west Virginia; and the Elizabethton, in the extreme northeast­
ern tip of Tennessee.17

Brownlow was coming to believe that he was important enough
to be written about; his name had been heralded all over South­
ern Appalachia and even to far-away Philadelphia. He imag­
ined that people must want to know more about himself, so in
the absence of any biographers, he decided that he would write
his own biography, though his scope of life had yet been less
than thirty years. He entitled his work, A Narrative of the Life,
Travels, and Circumstances Incident Thereto, of William G.
Brownlow.I8 True enough this autobiography was an appendix
to a larger work which he called Helps to the Study of Presby-

16 Brownlow, Helps to the Study of Presbyterianism, pp. 262-64; Irreligious
Oharacter of the Rebellion. An Address by Parson Brownlow. Delivered before
the Young Men'B Ohristian Association, at Oooper In.'{titute, New York, May
19,1862, p. 28; Journals of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal
Ohurch, I, 362-423.

17 For the record of Brownlow's itineracy see MinuteB of the Annual Oonfer­
enCeS of the Methodist Episcopal Ohurch for the YearB 1829-1839, I, 518. 519,
550; ibid., II, 12, 13, 52, 90, 133, 181,234,300,366,430. See also Brownlow, HelplI
to the Study of Presbyterianism, pp. 275-89.

18 This work embraced 53 pages.



~8 WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW

terianism or, an Unsophisticated Exposition of Calvinism, 'With
Hopkinsian Modifications and Policy, with a View to a More
Easy Interpretation of the Same. To Which is Added a Brief
Account of the Author, Interspersed with Anecdotes. This work
was printed for him by Frederick S. Heiskell, at Knoxville in
1884. The Parson was very frank with himself in his Life. Never
having heard of psychoanalysis, he made no attempt to put
himself through that process, but he was willing to state his
case in the best manner of which he was capable. He listed the
principal objections that had been urged against him as: his
inconsistency of character, a quarrelsome nature, his style as a
writer, talents as a preacher, and manners as a man, and a dis­
like by great numbers of people. He vigorously defended him­
self against every charge. As to his quarrelsome disposition, "I
pretend not to be a candidate for the honors of martyrdom, yet,
1 should feel that 1 had gone down to my grave disgraced, did 1
not incur the censure and abuse of bloated bigotry, and priestly
corruption." And, whether people liked him or not, he cared
little: "I never professed to have a great deal of polish about
me, nor do 1 desire to be polite." With a sort of a wounded
feeling, he added, "I never thought 1 was a great man-I never
desire to be what the world calls a great man." The Parson may
have misread himself a slight bit here; his whole subsequent
career was proof that he had a craving for power over people
but perhaps, not so much for adulation as for vengeance.19

For a long time his wrath had been piling up against the
Presbyterians. He had been dealing with the other wing of the
Calvinistic forces, the Baptists, in a rough and tumble method;
but the Presbyterians had been writing things against his re­
ligion, and he would now show them that there was at least one
Methodist who could also write, and who would write without
restraint if need be. One activity which he especially disliked
was a publication called the Calvinistic jfagazine, edited by
J ames Gallaher, Frederick A. Ross, and David Nelson, who
hurled this missile at the l\lethodist Church from their stronghold

18 Brownlow, Helps to the Study of Presbyterianism, pp. 290-94.



A NEW PARSON RIDES THE CIRCUIT ~9

in Rogersville, East Tennessee, in the midst of the Brownlow
country. As they entered upon this undertaking the very first
year the Parson began riding the circuit, doubtless he con­
sidered it a direct thrust at him and his work. They began their
first number with the prayer of a crusader and closed it with a
declaration of war against all who denied the doctrines of the
Presbyterian Church. Warfare it would be, between truth and
falsehood.

We are commanded to hold a controversy with the sinfulness of
our hearts, and it is equally obligatory to contend against error
wherever we find it. Written discussions, upon religious subjects,
are never to be deprecated, for error has never progressed so rap­
idly, as when the watchmen upon the walls of Zion, remain silent
and inactive. It will be said, controversy produces unchristian feel­
ings, and that it brings before the public, the differences of those
who worship the same Lord and follow the same Saviour. The first
objection is strong, only, against those who attempt to find truth
without asking for the holy aid of the Spirit of truth. The second
objection is plausible, but deceitful, because, falsehood, in moral
opinion, is sin, whether it is seen in the belief of an infidel or a
christian. No man can reject the doctrines taught by Christ and
his apostles and be guiltless.20

They quoted with approval the dictum of a contemporary,
"The fact is, whatever progress the cause of truth and holiness
has made in the world, has been made by controversy."21

This magazine carried on an offensive against the Methodists
by ridicule and by all the other weapons it could command. In
a skit entitled, "A Dialogue Between a Methodist and a Cal­
vinist," the follower of J ohn Wesley was demolished with ridi­
cule and contempt.22 Through four numbers in 18~8 this maga­
zine reviled and mocked the l\fethodists in "Dialogues on Church
Government Between a Citizen and a Methodist Circuit­
Rider.,,23 The trinity of Presbyterian divines who edited this

20 P. 31. The Oalvinistic Magazine came out monthly.
1Il Oalvinistic Magazine, vol. II, no. 10 (October, 1928), p. 298.
d Vol. I, no. 5 (May, 1827), pp. 145-49.
lIIIl Vol. II, nos. 4-7 (April-July, 1828).



30 WILLIAM: G. BROWNLOW

magazine published the following as a typical verse in a Method­
ist songbook:

"The Devil, Calvin, and Tom Paine,
l\JIay hate the Methodists in vain;
Their doctrines shall be downward hurl'd­
The Methodists shall take the world.,,24

The wonder is that the Fighting Parson, as he was later to
be called,25 showed so much self-restraint and desisted so long
from entering the fray. The Presbyterians had long been pes­
tering him, and just to prove how contentious they were, he
wrote for the N eUJmarket Telegraph, a Tennessee newspaper,
an article proving there was a God; and according to the Par­
son, a Presbyterian immediately denied that eternal truth.26

But now, in the year 1834, he resolved to buckle on the armor
of the Lord and go out to do battle with the infidel Presbyterians
and all other Calvinists. He had written his book, and in a styIe
that many people might not like. As for his "exuberance and
redundancy of language," he gladly admitted that they might
"be justly considered one, among the many other 'Winning 'Ways
I have to make folks hate me." He, too, believed in religious
controversy-"had it not been for controversy, Romish Priests
would now be feeding us with Latin masses and a 'Wafer godf"27

Brownlow selected some of the principal Calvinistic doctrines
and savagely attacked them. The ones to which he gave his par­
ticular attention were: that God decrees whatever comes to pass,
that there is unconditional election and reprobation, that Christ
died only for the elect, that there is irresistible grace to bring
in the elect, and that it is impossible to fall from grace. To show
how absurd and even sacrilegious these doctrines were, the Par­
son called attention to these two facts: that if God decrees all
things, then he produces murders, lying, and sins of all kinds;
and that if people are already saved or damned from the begin­
ning, what good is there in preaching or carrying'on missionary

24VoL III, no. 12 (December, 1829), p. 383.
m George D. Prentice is said to have given Brownlow this title. Putnam's lrlag­

azine, vol. III, no. 16 (April, 1869), p. 528.
1I6 Brownlow, Helps to the Study of Presbyterianism, p. 279.
l!1 Ibid., pp. xii, viii.



A NEW PARSON RIDES THE CIRCUIT 81
work?28 If it be foreordained that certain people are to be saved,
why baptize them; "they will be saved if they never see water,
and die drunk in the bargain !,,29 In order to escape these hard
and irresistible conclusions, many of the Presbyterians had run
off into what came to be called Hopkinsianism, a name given to
the doctrines promulgated by Samuel Hopkins, of Newport,
Rhode Island, in order to soften and side-step some of the more
severe tenets of Calvinism.30

But Brownlow was particularly interested in showing what
a terrible threat the Presbyterian Church organization carried
against the liberties and political institutions of the United
States. He called attention to the fact that the Presbyterians
and the New England Congregationalists were all of a feather
in their general doctrines and ambitions, that during the War
of 181~ New England had been pro-British and her ministers
had preached disloyal sermons, and what was most ominous of
all, that at one time New England had had a virtual union of
church and state which bond the Presbyterians were now secret­
ly praying to be restored throughout the nation. He greatly
feared this Presbyterian plot, for if it succeeded they would soon
be burning people as heretics. They were already referring to the
regions where the l\fethodists were strongest as "great moral
wastes." In his opinion, "There is indeed no bigotry so intol­
erable as religious bigotry, nor any hatred so unrelenting as
religious hatred." He sounded the warning: "Let the Presby­
terians once enslave us, as they are aiming to do, and we may
whine, and scold, and murmur, and wince, and threaten, and
beseech them to condescend, graciously to have mercy on us, but
it will all be to no purpose."31

The Parson had not allied himself with the Jeffersonian
school in politics and he had generally not looked to Thomas
Jefferson for his ideas but he was in perfect agreement with the

118 Ibid., pp. 208-9.
1& W. G. Brownlow, The Great Iron Wheel E:I!aminedj or, Its False Spokes

E:ctracted, and An E:I!hibition of Elder Graves, its Builder, in a Series of
Ohapters, p. 173.

30 Ibid., p. 216. For the nature of this doctrine, see Nathan Bangs, A History
of the ]rlethodist Episcopal Church, III, 11-29.

"t Brownlow, Helps to the Study of Presbyterianism, pp. vii, 94, 113-65, 167-76.



3~ WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW

Sage of Monticello on the subject of Presbyterianism. He was
delighted to find this paragraph in a letter Jefferson had written
to William Short in 18~O, and he quoted it with approval: "The
Presbyterian clergy are the loudest; the most intolerant of all
sects, the most tyrannical and ambitious; ready at the word of
the lawgiver, if such a word could be now obtained, to put the
torch to the pile, and to rekindle in this virgin hemisphere the
flames in which their oracle Calvin consumed the poor
Servetus...."32

But Brownlow was not depending on Thomas Jefferson or
on any other person for his proof of how wicked the Presby­
terians were or of their insidious attempt to unite church and
state, with themselves at the helm. A great many societies and
organizations had been springing up with ostensible religious
uplift programs, but the wary Parson knew too well that if one
should dig deep enough it would soon be evident that Presby­
terians were in charge of all of them, and that these organiza­
tions were gigantic tentacles to draw the people unaware into
one great Presbyterian consolidation. There was the American
Sunday School Union, generally referred to by Brownlow as
the A. S. S. Union, which, according to reports, was non-de­
nominational, but which Brownlow knew was controlled by the
Presbyterians for the sneaking purpose of entering politics and
winning elections. The American Tract Society was got up and
controlled by the Presbyterians, though it claimed to have all
the principal denominations represented in it. Brownlow knew
this claim to be a subterfuge, for did not the Methodists have a
tract society of their own? The American Bible Society was con­
trolled by the Presbyterians. It claimed to be giving away
Bibles, but Brownlow knew that the Presbyterians and their
Calvinistic co-conspirators, the Baptists, were actually selling
these Bibles and growing rich from plundering the poverty­
stricken seekers after religion. He had charged as much against
Parson Posey at Franklin, North Carolina, and the only reason
he had not proved his charges was because a Baptist was the

U Ibid., p. 179. This letter may be found in T. J. Randolph, ed., Memoir, Oor­
re,,)(mdtlBCB, and Milcellaniel, from (fie Paper8 of Thomal Jefferson, IV, 322.



A NEW PARSON RIDES THE cmCUIT 83
judge. No true Christian could obj eet to the American Tem­
perance Society, but Parson Brownlow predicted that the
Presbyterians would soon control it, for they were "a set of
infatuated fanatics." As for the Baptists, they were actually
against temperance, but he explained that situation on the
ground that they were "about a century behind the march of
mind."3s

The American Education Society was also under the domi­
nation of these self-seeking Presbyterians. Brownlow was not
opposed to education, if it were not of the Calvinistic variety.
"Ignorance," he declared, "never produced one item of felicity
to any man; the opinions of the Roman Catholics and Baptists