page_title: William G. Brownlow
section_title: U.S. Senate and his later life
hierarchical_section_title: William G. Brownlow / U.S. Senate and his later life
caption_attribution_description: English: The house and library of Tennessee Governor William G. Brownlow in Knoxville, Tennessee, as it appeared in the late 1860s.
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: Following his reelection as Governor of Tennessee in 1867, Brownlow decided he would not seek a third term, and instead sought election to the U.S. Senate seat that would be vacated by David T. Patterson, Andrew Johnson's son-in-law, in 1869.  In October 1867, the state legislature elected Brownlow over William B. Stokes by a 63 to 39 vote. By the time he was sworn in on March 4, 1869, a persistent nervous disease had weakened him considerably, and the Senate clerk had to read his speeches. One of his speeches was a defense of Ambrose Burnside, the Union general who had liberated Knoxville from Confederate forces in 1863.
  Brownlow was a member of the U.S. Senate when the final version of the bill S. 810 was introduced onto the Senate floor on April 19, 1870, enacted the next month by the U.S. Congress, and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on May 31, 1870 as the Enforcement Act of 1870 (also known under the popular titles as the Civil Rights Act of 1870 or the First Ku Klux Klan Act) and the later Second Enforcement Act of 1871 (also known under the popular titles as the Civil Rights Act of 1871 or the Third Ku Klux Klan Act) of the United States Congress which empowered the President to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in order to combat the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy organizations.
  After his Senate term ended in 1875, Brownlow returned to Knoxville. His successor as governor, DeWitt Clinton Senter, had undone most of his Radical initiatives, allowing Democrats to regain control of the state government.  Having sold the Whig in 1869, Brownlow purchased an interest in the Knoxville Chronicle, a Republican newspaper published by his old protégé, William Rule.  The paper's name was changed to the Knoxville Whig and Chronicle.  In 1876, Brownlow endorsed Rutherford B. Hayes for president. In December of the same year, he spoke at the opening of Knoxville College, which had been established for the city's African-American residents.
  On the night of April 28, 1877, Brownlow collapsed at his home, and died the following afternoon.  The cause of death was given as "paralysis of the bowels."  He was interred in Knoxville's Old Gray Cemetery following a funeral procession described by his colleague, Oliver Perry Temple, as the largest in the city's history up to that time.
caption: Brownlow's house and library at 211 Cumberland Avenue in Knoxville (no longer extant), as drawn by Benson John Lossing
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