William Gannaway Brownlow - Legacy

Legacy

In 1870, William Rule, who had been a journalist for the Whig, launched the Knoxville Chronicle, which he considered the Whig's pro-Republican successor. Rule continued editing this paper, which was eventually renamed the Knoxville Journal, until his death in 1928. The Knoxville Journal remained one of Knoxville's daily newspapers until it folded in 1991. Adolph Ochs, who later became publisher of the New York Times, began his career at the Chronicle in the early 1870s.

Brownlow remained a divisive figure for decades after his death. In 1999, historian Stephen Ash wrote, "more than 120 years after his death, merely mentioning his name in the Volunteer State can evoke raucous laughter or bitter curses." Brownlow has been described as "Tennessee's worst governor," and the "most hated man in Tennessee History." A 1981 poll of fifty-two Tennessee historians that ranked the state's governors on ability, accomplishments, and statesmanship, placed Brownlow dead last. In 1987, the Tennessee state legislature (which was dominated by Democrats) banned his portrait from the state Capitol.

Journalist Steve Humphrey argued that Brownlow was a talented newspaper editor and reporter, as evidenced by his reporting on events such as the opening of the Gayoso Hotel in Memphis and Knoxville's 1854 cholera epidemic. Rule wrote that Brownlow was "a master of invective and burning sarcasm, and he flourished in an age when such things were expected of a public journalist." J. Austin Sperry, Brownlow's rival editor in pre-Civil War Knoxville, admitted that Brownlow was a remarkable judge of human nature.