Neill S. Brown - Tennessee Politics

Tennessee Politics

Brown was a founding member of Tennessee's Whig Party. He was an elector for Hugh Lawson White in 1836, and campaigned for William Henry Harrison and Henry Clay in the presidential elections of 1840 and 1844, respectively. He was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1837, becoming the legislature's youngest member during the 1837-1839 term. In 1843, Brown ran a competitive race against Democratic incumbent Aaron V. Brown (no relation) for the 6th District congressional seat, but was defeated.

In 1847, Brown won the Whig nomination for governor. His opponent was once again Aaron Brown, who had been elected governor in 1845. Aaron Brown, an associate of President James K. Polk, was an ardent supporter of the Mexican-American War, while Neill Brown opposed it. The war was initially popular, but Tennesseans had grown weary of it by 1847, and Neill Brown was able to win the election by a narrow margin. The Whigs also gained control of the state legislature.

During Brown's lone term as governor, he oversaw the completion of a state school for the blind in Nashville and a state school for the deaf in Knoxville, both of which were launched during the administration of fellow Whig governor James C. Jones earlier in the decade. Brown also signed a law calling for true public schools to be established throughout the state, but it was left to local governments to implement the provisions of this law, and very little was to come out of it.

The end of the Mexican-American War raised the issue of the expansion of slavery into the newly acquired territory. Brown opposed the Wilmot Proviso, which called for slavery to be banned in all territory acquired as a result of the war, but the division in the national Whig Party on the issue damaged the party's image in slave-holding Tennessee. Though Brown fought a competitive campaign in 1849, he was defeated in his bid for reelection by General William Trousdale.