The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-03-15
AN ECHO or THE PAST.


 It is sometimes interesting to hark back about half century and note the opinions of prominent men who were then in the public eye. An ex- ample of this class is found in the per son of William c. Browniow. of Ten nessee. He was one of the noted characters of that stirring period pre- ccding the great struggle between the sections. An uncompromising whig, he hated the Democrats with an inten- sity natural to one of his positive and fiery character, and never missed an opportunity, on the stump or in the columns of his Knoxville Whig to pour hot shot into his political enemies. An intense Southerner. his hatred of the abolitionists was boundless and his devotion to his own section was at that time almost without limit. Whether we take him as preacher. editor or poli- tician we will find him equally fearless, bitter and unrelenting.
 In 1856 Elder J. R. Graves published book entitled '"rhe Great Iron Wheel" which was an attack on the institu- tion of slavery. As might have been expected "Parson Brownlow' could not let pass an opportunity like that to do some knocking, and he responded with volume called. The Iron Wheel Examined and its Spokes Extracted" from which we make the following ex- trast.
 The slavery agitation, that had been buried by the compromise acts of 1850, is anew lifting it's head, and, under the piratical flag of Black Republicanism," asserting the rights of human liber- ty;" her internal altars smoke with fresh incense, and. enlisted in her de- fense, are scores of designing men in the South-some filling pulpits. some occupying high positions in colleges and academies, and who, among us are not of us." our Southern friends may rest assured.
 am not, and never have been, in- terested in the slave trafffc, or inn mersed in the cares, advantages and disadvantages of the institution of slavery, and therefore I claim to be a disinterested looker-on. A native of Virginia, I have lived half century in the South, and seen the workings of the institution of slavery, in its best and worst forms, and in all the Southern States. I have gone among the free negroes of the North, and, in every in- stance, have found them more misera- ble and destitute, as whole. than the slave population of the South. In our Southern States, where negroes have been set at liberty, in nine cases out of ten. their conditions have been made worse: while the most wretched. lazy, and dishonest class of persons in the Southern States are free persons of color, therefore go against the eman- cipation of slaves altogether, unless O n a take my stand with the friends of the institution of slavery in the South. and, in defense of the rights of the South. connected with this question. I will go as far as the next man-even dying In the last ditch.
 That was what might have been ex- .pected of the Tennessee Fighting Par son" as he was called, but he did not stop at that. He went to the Bible and to the records of the early Chris tian Church for proof to sustain his position and declared that his re- searches and investigations had led him regularly, gradually certainly. to relations of master and slave to exist" Some two years later he and Rev. A. Pryne, of New York, had a noted dis cussion on the question of slavery, in which Brownlow defended the institu- tion with the fiery zeal and invective of which he was master.
 That was the Brownlow of the ante- war period. It is pity that he should have changed, but perhaps there were others who should bear some of the blame. When the question of secession came up he opposed 1t in his usual style He chung to the Union as the surest means of preserving the institutions of the South. He advocated the Union cause so zealously, and opposed seces- sion so bitterly and intemperately that his paper was suppressed and he him. self arrested on the charge of treason and sent into the Union lines in the spring of 1862.
 But he had his revenge, for he re- turned to Tennessee as soon as the war was over, was twice elected Governor by the Union sentiment, the negroes and the carpet -baggers, and finally be- came a United States Senator and served a full term. But he was a diff ferent Brownlow to the Lighting Par son" of the sos. His intense Southern rights gave place to equally intense Unionism. and he experienced the usual fate of Southern men who turned against their own section and people.