Portrait and Biography of Parson Brownlow, The Tennessee Patriot

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

REMARKS OF MR. FISK

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

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

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

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

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

PARSON BROWNLOW AND THE CINCINNATI METHODIST PREACHERS

During his stay in Cincinnati, Mr. Brownlow received a pressing invitation to meet the Methodist ministers of the city, and address them; in accordance with which he was introduced to a meeting, held in the editorial rooms of the Western Christian Advocate, by Rev. J. T. Mitchell. Rev. Dr. Kingsley then welcomed the illustrious visitor in the following

ADDRESS

Fellow Citizen, Friend and Brother: – In behalf of the Methodist Clergymen of this vicinity, I welcome you to our city, our homes, our hearts. Our desires and prayers were never more sincere for anything, than for your preservation and deliverance, when we learned that you had been thrust into a cold, damp prison, for no other crime than loving your country, and hating treason. Thank God, the prayers of millions of loyal hearts have been heard in your behalf.

Paul, and Silas, and Peter, Apostles of the Gospel, were liberated from prison in answer to prayer. The God in whom they trusted has also heard the prayer in behalf of an Apostle of Liberty and Union.

Your patriotic utterances in your noble paper were eagerly received by the friends of the Constitution, and, multiplied a thousand fold, those utterances sped upon the wings of lightning to the most distant parts of our country. They were inspiring to the loyal people of the United States. We were thankful to know that there was at least one Parson in Tennessee who could love God and his country too – his whole country. One such man can chase a thousand, and two can put ten thousand to flight. So we conclude that Parson Brownlow and Andy Johnson are good against ten thousand rebels. With such pains and such pluck, such nerves and such principles to guide, we trust the State of Tennessee will soon come right again.

We are aware that your Union principles have cost you something – cost you everything but life, and that which, to every true man, is dearer than life, – honor and rectitude. We bid you a warm welcome on this account. Situated as we have been, we deserve no praise for being Union men. To be otherwise would be to serve the devil just for its own sake. It would be like chopping off our hands just to see the blood run, or thrusting them into the fire just to feel the pain. But with you the case has been different. Spurning bribes and offers of aggrandizement, scorning the threats and terrors of traitors, you have preferred to suffer privations, afflictions and imprisonment, rather than prove false to the Government that has protected us all. By thus, in the face of danger and death, taking your stand so nobly against all odds, all hazards, all temptations, and machinations of wicked seducers, you have won the undying admiration of a grateful people. Your deeds have thus become so interwoven with the most eventful period in the annals of our country, that your name is henceforth to be a household word, so long as the American Republic shall live in fact or in history. Yours is the proud satisfaction of having done right for its own sake, in the face of powerful temptations to do wrong, and you have your reward. And if a very unpoetic man may be allowed to amend a couplet familiar to our school-boy days, I would venture to say:

"And more true joy the Parson exiled feels
Than Davis, with the traitors at his heels."

But, thank God, you are no longer exiled or imprisoned. A tide has come in your affairs to bear you on to fortune. And it will be nothing strange, and no more than justice, if the same State which has confiscated your property, and imprisoned your person, should conclude to honor herself by honoring you, and shall yet say to you, "Well done good and faithful servant; be thou ruler over ten cities."

All that is necessary to the Union cause is enough of this same earnest, unflinching, unchanging determination to face and destroy this monstrous rebellion, no matter who or what opposes.

If the Union can not be preserved without saltpeter, then let enough of this article be employed to secure the result. And, if the disordered livers of political hypochondriacs can not be restored to healthy action without the use of blue pills, then let enough of these be given to work a cure.

God has given the American people a goodly heritage – the fairest the world has ever seen. There is not a nation under all the heaven where the pulse does not beat quicker, and the hopes rise higher, and the thoughts grow larger, at the very mention of the American Republic. Never have the hopes of humanity so centered in any nation. Our country had come to be regarded as the cradle of liberty, the home of plenty, and the asylum for the poor and oppressed of other lands.

Shall these high hopes perish? Shall this light of the Nations go out in everlasting darkness? Shall a few desperate men – desperate by their lust of power – desperate by disappointed ambition – desperate by their dark and damning apostacy from the faith of our fathers – shall these be allowed to destroy our glorious heritage?

Shall the son strike with rude hands the mother that bore him? Nay, more, shall he tear her limb from limb, and give her flesh to dogs? Shall the fair fruits of the tree of liberty perish, the branches torn off, and the roots burned with fire? God forbid! Such a calamity to the present and coming generations of mankind must be prevented, cost what it will. It must be prevented, though it be necessary to send every leading traitor after Judas Iscariot; and if they will not, like Judas, wait on themselves, others must have the politeness to wait on them.

Again I welcome you to our homes and hearts. Our prayer is that your health may be restored; that your family may be preserved in your absence, and that you may be permitted to see a good old age in the midst of a prosperous, happy and united people.

And when your earthly pilgrimage shall approach its termination, and you retrospect the past, may you be able to say, in the language of one who has gone before you, and who preferred a prison to a guilty conscience, "I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith." And then, as you look to the future, may your eye of faith, like his, see for you laid up "a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give you in that day."

Parson Brownlow replied as follows:

I thank you, Brother, and through you the Preachers' Association, for your had expression of sympathy and regard. I claim, as a Union man, to have done nothing but my duty. I have always been a Union man, and have edited a Union paper for the last twenty-five years. I was traveling a circuit in South Carolina in 1832, when I was elected to the General Conference, and there met with Rev. L. F. Wright and L. Swormsted. I was also traveling the Anderson District of the Holston conference in the same State, and living near Calhoun during the nullification troubles which were so soon throttled by Old Hickory. This thing called Secession originated in falsehood, theft and perjury. Floyd did the stealing, the masses of the people did the lying, and fourteen U. S. Senators from the Cotton States the perjury. While in the Senate, in the day time, they made a show of keeping their oaths, but at night they held their secret caucuses, planning Secession, and advising their leaders to seize the prominent forts of the South, and arms of importance wherever they could find them. I have no doubt there are better men in hell, or in the Penitentiaries of this or any other State, than the prominent leaders in this Secession movement. And I am sorry to say that the worst class of men now in the Southern Confederacy are the Episcopalian, Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian preachers. High functionaries in the Episcopalian church are now drinking and swearing. Men who have met in our General Conferences with some of these aged brethren whom I now see around me, preach as chaplains on Sabbath, but swear and get drunk through the week. A Presbyterian minister in Knoxville invited all denominations to hold a union prayer meeting, to pray to the Lord to sink Burnside's fleet, and raise Lincoln's blockade. And at it they went, composed of many old clerical rips, who besieged a throne of grace, raising their hands, heaving and setting like an old Tennessee ram at a gate-post, that God would send lightning and storm and raise the blockade. And the Lord did give them a raise– at Roanoke Island, and with that kind of lightning and storm which they did not expect in answer to prayer. I also heard a Presbyterian minister in Knoxville make use of the following words on the Lord's day, which he would give to show the degradation of the pulpit. In the course of his remarks he stated that Jesus Christ was a Southern man, and all of his Apostles were Southern men, save Judas, who was from the North. And that he would rather read a text from a Bible bound in hell than front one printed and bound North of Mason and Dixon's line. I regard the churches in the South ruined; and financially they are in a bad fix. I came across Dr. McFarren about seventy miles from Nashville, trying to run away; but his horse wouldn't work. He traded the horse for a mule, but the mule wouldn't work. When I left him he was standing on the street, in company with his wife and children, looking for another trade. Huston, Sehon and Baldwin were still in Nashville adhering to Secession. The citizens of Nashville could but note the contrast, and expressed their opinions in regard to the superiority of the officers and soldiers of the Federal army over those of the Confederate. The former were well-dressed and well-behaved, and did not insult citizens nor ladies upon the streets. While, on the contrary, the vagabonds of the Confederate army stole everything upon which they could lay their hands, and drove peaceable citizens from their homes. While there were some honorable exceptions in the Confederate army, strange to say it seemed to be mostly composed of the off-scouring of the land; swearing, lewd fellows, of the most degraded possible character. I had a hard time among them, and was satisfied that they intended to execute me. I owe my escape to the fact that for so long a time I had been an editor, and, to a great extent, had gained the confidence of the people. The Union sentiment prevails in East Tennessee five to one. Among them my friends notified the leaders that, if Brownlow was hurt, twelve of their prominent men would be sacrificed for his life, and I think they were afraid to hang me. So they wrote to Davis and Benjamin that they had better release me; that I had many friends, and that my presence would continue to stir up the rebellion; and that, if they could send me out of their lines, they would get rid of me and my influence. Therefore Benjamin thought that, as I was a very wicked fellow and a great traitor, he would release me on conditions that I would leave the Southern Confederacy, and, if I would do so, they would give me a safe passport out of their lines. So I opened a correspondence with that little, contemptible Jew —Judas Benjamin, and consented to do for the Southern Confederacy what the devil had never done —leave the country. They still hold my wife and children as hostages for my good behavior. I don't think they will hurt them. I hope not.

But I told my wife, before I left, to prepare for execution, for, as certain as I got North, I would not behave myself, according to Jeff. Davis' understanding. I am now feeble, having been preaching and discoursing for thirty-five years. I have seen the day when I could have spoken five hours at a time; but my late imprisonment, in connection with my typhoid fever, has broken down my constitution. When feeblest, they doubled the guard, and pretended to think that my sickness was all a sham, in order that more liberty would be given me, and then I could escape. I told them that it was unnecessary, for if there was no guard I could not run away. For I had written to Benjamin, and, if he would not send me away in the proper manner, I would not go. I had made up my mind to hang. I had seen my friends taken from the same prison – one or two at a time – and hung. Sometimes the father and son on the same day. While this was going on, they would say tauntingly, "Your turn will be next, for you are the ringleader and cause of all this trouble." I told them if they would give me the privilege of making a speech, one hour long, under the gallows, that I might speak to the people and pronounce a eulogy on the Southern Confederacy, that I would be willing to die. And I really think I could have swung in peace. It is my intention to go back to Knoxville and start my paper. I want to go with the army, and once more raise the flag of the stars and stripes, and then blaze away. They have been doing all of the hanging on one side, and I wish to superintend it on the other. My motto is, "Grape for the masses, but hemp for the leaders." They deserve hanging, for this is the most wicked rebellion ever known to the world. If you had given them a President and all the offices, there would have been no rebellion – for the "nigger" is a mere pretext.

After thanking the brethren, he was introduced to the Ministers and friends present, and then took his leave. During the day he visited the Book Concern, and expressed himself highly pleased with its evident prosperity.

BROWNLOW IN INDIANAPOLIS

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

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

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

Wm. Hannaman,

David McDonald,

Governor Morton,

Mayor Maxwell,

Calvin Fletcher, Esq.

Col. James Blake,

J. H. McKernan, Esq.

B. R. Sulgrove, Esq.

Alfred Harrison, Esq.

SPEECH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Cold performs the effect of fire,"