page_title: William G. Brownlow
section_title: Early newspaper owner
hierarchical_section_title: William G. Brownlow / Early newspaper owner
caption_attribution_description: English: Graphic from the Jonesborough Whig mocking 1848 U.S. presidential candidate Lewis Cass.
context_page_description: William Gannaway "Parson" Brownlow was an American newspaper publisher, Methodist minister, book author, prisoner of war, lecturer, and politician. He served as Governor of Tennessee from 1865 to 1869 and as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 1869 to 1875. Brownlow rose to prominence in the late 1830s and early 1840s as editor of the Whig, a polemical newspaper in East Tennessee that promoted Whig Party ideals and opposed secession in the years leading up to the American Civil War. Brownlow's uncompromising and radical viewpoints made him one of the most divisive figures in Tennessee political history and one of the most controversial Reconstruction Era politicians of the United States.
  Beginning his career as a Methodist circuit rider in the 1820s, Brownlow was both censured and praised by his superiors for his vicious verbal debates with rival missionaries of other sectarian Christian beliefs. Later, as a newspaper publisher and editor, he was notorious for his relentless personal attacks against his religious and political opponents, sometimes to the point of being physically assaulted.
context_section_description: Brownlow cut his teeth in the newspaper business during 1838 writing for the short-lived Elizabethton Republican and Manufacturer's Advocate, initially under its editor William Gott. This weekly Elizabethton newspaper advanced Whig politics, and by the time that Brownlow had later been promoted as its editor, the Elizabethton Republican and Manufacturer's Advocate had some three hundred subscribers and was closely associated with Mason R. Lyon.
  Historian Stephen Ash says:
  What made the Parson stand out was, more than anything else, his vitriolic tongue and pen. Over the course of his long career, he took up many causes. These included not only Methodism, Whiggery, and the Union, but also temperance, Know-Nothingism, and slavery. His favorite method of promoting those causes was to chastise and ridicule his opponents, and few men could do so with as much venomous wit as he. Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Mormons, Democrats, Republicans, secessionists, drunks, immigrants, and abolitionists—all were at one time or another on the receiving end of Brownlow's merciless broadsides. Not surprisingly, he made many enemies. A number of them replied in kind; some tried to kill him.
  The rising Elizabethton attorney T.A.R. Nelson suggested that Brownlow should launch a newspaper to support Whig Party candidates in the upcoming elections.  Brownlow partnered with the Elizabethton newspaper publisher, Mason R. Lyon, and as the editor within their partnership, with the agreement that Brownlow would receive one-third of the new profits from the Tennessee Whig. Brownlow and Lyon launched their weekly Tennessee Whig on Thursday, May 16, 1839, and within several weeks, Brownlow and Lyon would rebrand their new weekly newspaper as the Elizabethton Whig starting with the June 13, 1839 edition of the newspaper.
  As Brownlow's vituperative editorial style quickly brought bitter division to Elizabethton, and he began quarreling with local Whig-turned-Democrat Landon Carter Haynes. Haynes had read law under Elizabethton attorney T.A.R. Nelson, and Haynes would later follow Nelson to Jonesborough during 1840, where Haynes would eventually edit a Jonesborough newspaper.
  Brownlow and the Elizabethton Whig also relocated from Elizabethton and to Jonesborough during the same year, where the weekly Brownlow newspaper was again rebranded as the Jonesboro Whig (the Tennessee town has spelled municipal name two different ways through its history), publishing the first edition of the second volume on May 7, 1840. Brownlow had also brought along Valentine Garland along as a new business partner within his Jonesboro Whig enterprise.  Garland had previously worked as a journeyman printer with the Elizabethton Whig and had purchased Lyon's interest in the Elizabethton Whig for $550.00, but their business partnership in the Jonesboro Whig was short-lived as an announcement published on August 12, 1840 notified the Whig readers that the Brownlow and Garland business partnership was dissolved.
  Brownlow would later accost Haynes in a Jonesborough street and then proceeded to beat Haynes with a sword cane, prompting Haynes to draw out his pistol and shoot Brownlow in the thigh.  Haynes was later hired as editor of the competing  Democratic Tennessee Sentinel the following year, and the editors Brownlow and Haynes would publish polemics targeting each other within their respective newspapers over the next several years.
  In 1845, 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, out of just over 10,000 votes cast.
  Brownlow supported Whig policies such as a national bank, federal funding for internal improvements (more specifically, public improvements to the Moccasin Bend area of the Tennessee River near Chattanooga allowing for better steamboat transportation of goods to New Orleans), de
caption: Ad in an 1848 issue of the Jonesborough Whig, attacking presidential candidate Lewis Cass
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