William Gannaway Brownlow - Early Newspaper Editor

Early Newspaper Editor

In the mid-1830s, Brownlow wrote several anti-nullification articles for Judge Thomas Emmerson's Jonesborough, Tennessee-based paper, the Washington Republican and Farmer's Journal. Impressed, Emmerson encouraged Brownlow to pursue a career in journalism. After Brownlow settled in nearby Elizabethton in 1839, rising local attorney T.A.R. Nelson suggested he launch a newspaper to support Whig Party candidates in the upcoming elections. Brownlow partnered with publisher and former Emmerson associate Mason R. Lyon, and the two launched the Tennessee Whig in May 1839.

Brownlow's vituperative editorial style quickly brought bitter division to Elizabethton, and he began quarreling with local Whig-turned-Democrat Landon Carter Haynes. After the Whig relocated to Jonesborough in May 1840, Brownlow accosted Haynes in the street and began beating him with a sword cane, prompting Haynes to shoot him in the thigh. Haynes was hired as editor of the Democratic Tennessee Sentinel the following year, and the two blasted each other in their respective papers for the next several years.

In 1843, Brownlow ran against Andrew Johnson for the state's 1st District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Using the Whig to support his campaign, he accused Johnson of being illegitimate, suggested Johnson's relatives were murderers and thieves, and stated that Johnson was an atheist. Johnson won the election by 1,300 votes, but Brownlow continued assailing his character until the Civil War.

Brownlow supported Whig policies such as a national bank, federal funding for internal improvements, and a weakened presidency. He called Andrew Jackson the "greatest curse that ever yet befell this nation," and attacked Jackson's supporters, the Locofocos, in his 1844 book, A Political Register. While Brownlow steadfastly supported Whig candidates such as John Bell and James C. Jones, his true political idol was Kentucky senator Henry Clay. Clay was consistently Brownlow's first choice for the party's presidential candidate throughout the 1840s. Brownlow's son, John, recalled that one of the few times he ever saw his father cry was after he had received the news of Clay's defeat in the presidential election of 1844.

In May 1849, Brownlow relocated the Whig to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he was already well known for his clashes with the Democratic Standard, which he had dubbed a "filthy lying sheet," and its editor, A.R. Crozier. Prior to his departure, an unknown assailant clubbed Brownlow in the head, leaving him bedridden for two weeks. He blamed this act on Knoxville's newspaper interests, who feared his competition. Upon his arrival, he became embroiled in an editorial war with Knoxville Register editor John Miller McKee that lasted until McKee's departure in 1855.

Brownlow joined the Sons of Temperance in 1850, and promoted temperance policies in the Whig (one of his more common personal attacks was to accuse his opponents of being "drunkards"). Following the collapse of the Whig Party in the mid-1850s, he aligned himself with the Know Nothing movement, as he had long shared this movement's anti-Catholic and nativist sentiments. In 1856, he published a book, Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism and Bogus Democracy, which attacked Catholicism, foreigners and Democratic politicians.

In the late 1850s, Brownlow turned his guns on Knoxville's Democratic Party leaders and their associates. He quarreled with the radical Southern Citizen, a pro-secession newspaper published by businessman William G. Swan and Irish Patriot John Mitchel (who spent time in Knoxville while in exile), and on at least one occasion, threatened Swan with a revolver. Following the failure of the Bank of East Tennessee in 1858, Brownlow ruthlessly assailed its directors. His attacks forced A.R. Crozier and William Churchwell to flee the state, and drove John H. Crozier from public life. He sued another director, J. G. M. Ramsey, winning a civil judgement on behalf of the bank's depositers.