Portrait and Biography of Parson Brownlow, The Tennessee Patriot

by William Gannaway Brownlow

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.)