of his country. [Cheers.]

AVhen Floyd commenced stealing muskets and other implements
of war, and his associates commenced plotting treason, had Old
Hickory been President, rising about ten feet in his boots and tak-
ing Floyd by the collar, he would have sworn by the God that
made Moses, this thing must stop. [Great laughter and applause.]
And when Andrew Jackson swore that a thing had to stop, it had
to stop. [Laughter.] More recently still, we had a rebellion in
the neighboring State of Khode Island, known as the Dorr rebel-



12 PAESON BROWNLOW ON THE

lion, and the Government very efficiently and very properly put it
down ; but the great conspiracy of the nineteenth century and the
great rebellion of the age is now on hand, and I believe that Abe
Lincoln, with the people to back hira, will crush it out. [Cheers
and applause.] It will be done, it must be done, and it shall
be done — [great cheering] — and, having done that thing, gentlemen
and ladies, if they will give us a few weeks' rest to recruit, we will
lick England and France both, if they wish it — [loud applause] —
and I am not certain but we will have to do it — particularly Old
England. [Great laughter.] She has been playing a double, a
two-fisted game, and she was well represented by Russell, for he
carried water on both shoulders. I don't like the tone of her jour-
nals, and when this war is finished, we shall have four or five hun-
dred thousand well-drilled, hardened officers and men, inured to the
hardships of war, under the lead of experienced officers, and then we
shall be ready for the rest of the world and the balance of mankind.
When the rebellion first opened — something like twelve months
ago — I saw, as every reading and observing man could see,
where we were driving to, and what would be the state of things
in a very short time. In the inauguration of the rebellion I took
sides with the Union and with the Stars and Stripes of my
country. [Applause.] How could I do otherwise? I had trav-
eled the circuit as a Methodist preacher in the State of South
Carolina in 1832, in Pickens and Anderson counties (Anderson
County being the one where John C. Calhoun lived), and I fought
with all the ability I possessed, and all the energy I could muster,
the heresy of nullification then. I even prepared a pamphlet in
South Carolina, of seventy pages, backing up and sustaining Old
Hickory, and denouncing the nullifiers — and they threatened to
hang me then. I have been a Union man all my life. [Applause.]
I have never been a sectional man. I commenced my political
career in Tennessee in the memorable year of 1828, and I was one,
thank God, of the corporal's guard who got up the electoral ticket
for John Quincy Adams against Andrew Jackson. In the next
contest I was for Clay. [Great cheering.] You aod I and all of us
cheer and applaud the mention of the name of Henry Clay. I
propose to move, when this rebellion is over, that we shall hold a
National Convention, and I will put in nomination for the Pres-
idency, the last suit of clothes that Clay wore before his death.
[Great laughter and applause.] When the rebellion fairly opened,
and was under way in Tennessee, they saw the course my



SUFFERINGS OF UNION MEN.



13



paper was taking, and they approached me, as they did every other
editor of a Union paper in the country, with money. They knew
I was poor, and they supposed it would have the same influence
over me that it had over ahnost all the other Union editors of the
South, for they had bought up the last devil of them all through-
out the South. [Laughter and cheers.] I told them as one did of
old : " Thy money perish with thee." I pursued the even tenor of
my way until the stream rose higher and higher with secession fire,
as red and hot as hell itself, and commenced pouring along that
great artery of travel, the railroad to Manassas, Yorktown, Rich-
mond, and Petersburg. Then it was that, wanting in transporta-
tion, wanting in rolling stock, wanting in locomotives, they had to
lie over by regiments in our town, and then they commenced to
ride Union men upon rails. I have seen that done in the streets,
and have seen, them break into the stores and empty their con-
tents ; and coming before my house with ropes in their hands, they

would groan out, " Let us give old Brownlow a turn, the d d

old scoundrel ; come out, and we will hang you to the first tree."
I would appear, sometimes, on the front portico of my house, and
would address them in this way : " Men, what do you want with
me ?" for I was very select in my words. I took particular pains
to never say gentlemen. [Laughter.] " Men, what do you want
with me ?" " We want a speech from you ; we want you to come
out for the Southern Confederacy." To which I replied: "I
have no speech to make to you. You know me as well as I know
you ; I am utterly and irreconcilably opposed to this infernal rebel-
lion in which you are engaged, and I shall fight it to the bitter end.
I hope that if you are going on to kill the Yankees in search of
your rights, that you will get your rights before you get back."
These threats toward me were repeated every day and every week,
until finally they crushed out my paper, destroyed my office, ap-
propriated the building to an old smith's shop, to repair the locks
and barrels of old muskets that Floyd had stolen from the Federal
Government. They finally enacted a law in the Legislature of
Tennessee authorizing an armed force to take all the arms, pistols,
guns, dirks, swords, and everything of the sort from all the Union
men, and they paid a visit to every Union house in the State.
They visited mine three times in succession upon that business,
and they got there a couple of guns and one pistol. Being a Doctor
of Divinity myself, I was not largely supplied, and had the balance



14 PAESON BROWNLOW ON THE

concealed under my clothes. [Great laughter.] Finally, after
depriving us of all our arms throughout the State, and after taking
all the fine horses of the Union men everywhere, without fee or
reward, for cavalry horses, and seizing upon the fat hogs, corn,
fodder, and sheep, going into houses and pulling the beds off the
bedsteads in the daytime, seizing upon all the blankets they could
find, for the army ; after breaking open chests, bureaus, drawers,
and everything of that sort — in which they were countenanced and
tolerated by the authorities, civil and military — our people rose up
in rebellion, unarmed as they were, and one Saturday niglit in
November, by accident — I know it was — precisely at 11 o'clock,
from Chattanooga to the Virginia line — a distance of 300 miles —
all the railroad bridges took fire at one time. [Cheers and
applause.] It was purely accidental. I happened to be out from
home at the time. [Laughter,] I had really gone out on horse-
back — as they had suppressed my paper — to collect the fees which
the sheriifs' clerks of the diflerent counties were owing me, which
they, being Union men, were ready and willing to pay me, know-
ing that I needed them to live upon ; and as these bridges took
fire while I was out of town, they swore that I was the bell-wether
and ringleader of all the devilment that was going on, and hence
that I must have had a hand in it. They wanted a pretext to
seize upon me, and upon the 6th day of December they marched
me off to jail — a miserable, uncomfortable, damp, and desperate
jail — where I found, when I was ushered into it, some 150 Union
men; and, as God is my judge, I say here to-night, there was not
in the whole jail a chair, bench, stool, or table, or any piece of
furniture, except a dirty old wooden bucket and a pair of tin dip-
pers to drink with. I found some of the first and best men of the
whole country there. I knew them all, and they knew me, as I
had been among them for thirty years. They rallied round me,
some smiling and glad to see me, as I could give them the news
that had been kept from them. Others took me by the hand, and
were utterly speechless, and, with bitter, burning tears running
down their cheeks, they said that they never thought that they
would come to this at last, looking through the bars of a grate.
Speaking first to one and then another, I bade them be of good
cheer and take good courage. Addressing them, I said, " Is it for
stealing you are here ? No. Is it for counterfeiting ? No. Is it
for manslaughter ? No. You are here, boys, because you adhere



SUFFERINGS OF UNION MEN. J 5

to the flag and the Constitution of our country. [Cheers.] I am
here with you for no other offense hut that ; and, as God is my
judge, boys, I look upon this 6th day of December as the proudest
day of my life. [Great applause.] And here I intend to stay until
I die of old age, or until they choose to hang me. I will never
renounce my principles." [Cheers.]

Before I was confined in the jail, their officers were accustomed
to visit the jail every day and offer them their liberty, if they
would take the oath of allegiance to the Southern Confederacy and
volunteer to go into the service, and they would guarantee them
safety and protection. They were accustomed to volunteer a dozen
at a time, no great was their horror of imprisonment and the bad
treatment they received in that miserable jail. After I got into
the jail — and they had me in close confinement for three dreadful
winter months — all this volunteering and taking the oath ceased,
and the leaders swore I did it. [Great cheering.] One of the
brigadier-generals, the son of an ex-Governor of that State, who
was in command of the military post, paid me a special visit, two
of his aids accompanying him. He came in, bowed and scraped,
dressed within an inch of his drunken life, saying : " Why, Brownlow,
you ought not to be in here." "But your authorities," I replied,
" have thought otherwise, and they have put me here." " I have
come to inform you that if you will take the oath of allegiance to
the Southern Confederacy, we will guarantee the protection and
safety of yourself and family." Eising up several feet in my boots
at that time, having my Irish raised and looking him full in the
eye, " Why," said I, "I intend to lie here until I rot from disease,
or die of old age, before I will take the oath of allegiance to your
government. I deny your right to administer such an oath. I
deny that you have any government other than a Southern mob.
You have never been recognized by any civilized power on the
face of the earth, and you never will be. [Applause.] And, sir,
preacher as I am, I will see the Southern Confederacy, and you
and me on top of it, in the infernal regions, before I will do it."
" Well," said he, " that's d d plain talk." [Laughter and ap-
plause.] "Yes," I replied, "that's the way to talk in revolutionary
times." [Applause.] But I must hasten on. I will detain you too
long. [Loud cries of " Go on, go on."] But, gentlemen and
ladies, things went on. They tightened up ; they grew tighter, and
still more tight. Many of our company became sick. We had to



IQ PAKSON BEOWNLOW ON THE

lie upon tliat miserable, cold, naked floor, with not room enongli
for us all to lie down at the same time — and you may think what
it must have been in December and January — spelling each other,
one lying down awhile on the floor, and then another taking his
I^lace so made warm, and that was the way we managed until
many became sick unto death. A number of the prisoners died of
pneumonia and typhoid fever, and other diseases contracted by ex-
posure there. I shall never forget, while my head is above ground,
the scenes I passed through in that jail. I recollect two vener-
able Baptist clergymen who were there — Mr. Pope and Mr.
Gate. Mr. Gate w^as very low indeed, prostrated from the fever
and unable to eat the miserable food sent there by the corrupt
jailer and deputy marshal — a man w^hom I had denounced in my
paper as guilty of forgery time and time again — a suitable repre-
sentative of the thieves and scoundrels that head this rebellion in
the South. [Applause.] The only favor they extended to me was
to allow my family to send me three meals a day by my son, who
brought the provisions in a basket. I requested my wnfe to send
also enough for the two old clergymen. One of them was put in
jail for offering prayers for the President of the United States, and
the other w-as confined for throwing up his hat and cheering the
Stars and Stripes as they passed his house, borne by a company of
Union volunteers. "When the basket of provisions came in the
morning, they examined it at the door, would look between the pie
and the plate to see if there was any billet or paper concealed
there communicating treason from any outside Unionist to the old
scoundrel they had in jail ; and when the basket went out, again the
same ceremony w^as repeated, to discover w hether I had slipped in
any paper in any way. The old man Gate had three sons in jail.
One of them, James Madison Gate, a most exemplary and worthy
member of the Baptist church, who was there for having commit-
ted no other crime than that of refusing to volunteer, lay stretched
at length upon the floor, with one thickness of a piece of carpet
under him and an old overcoat doubled up for a pillow, in the very
agonies of death, unable to turn over, only from one side to the
other. His wife came to visit him, bringing her youngest child
with her, which was but a babe, but they refused her admittance.
I put my head out of the jail window, and entreated them, for
God's sake, to let the poor woman come in, as her husband was
dying. They at last consented that she might see him for the



SUFFEEINGS OF UNION MEN, 17

limited time of fifteen minutes. As she came in and looked upon
her husband's wan and emaciated face, and saw how rapidly he
was sinking, she gave evident signs of fainting, and would have
fallen to the floor with the babe in her arms, had I not rushed up
to her and cried, "Let me have the babe," and then she sank down
upon the breast of her dying husband, unable at first to speak a
single word. I sat by and held the babe until the fifteen minutes
had expired, when the officer came in, and in an insulting and per-
emptory manner notified her that the interview was to close. I
hope I may never see such a scene again ; and yet such cases were
common all over East Tennessee.

Such actions as these show the spirit of secession in the South.
It is the spirit of murder and assassination — it is the spirit of hell.
And yet you have men at the ISTorth who sympathize with tliese
infernal murderers. [Applause.] If I owed tlie devU a debt to
be discharged, and it was to be discharged by the rendering up to
him of a dozen of the meanest, most revolting, and God-forsaken
wretches that ever could be culled from the ranks of depraved hu-
man society, and I wanted to pay that debt and get a premium
upon the payment, I would make a tender to his Satanic Majesty
of twelve Northern men who sympathized with this infernal rebel-
lion. [Great cheering.] If I am severe and bitter in my remarks
— [cries of " No, no ; not a bit of it"] — if I am, gentlemen, you
must consider that we in the South make a personal matter of
this thing. [Laughter.] We have no respect or confidence in any
Northern man who sympathizes with this infernal rebellion —
[cries of " Good, good"] — nor should any be tolerated in walking
Broadway at any time. Such men ought to be ridden upon a rail
and ridden out of the North. ["Good, good."] They should
be either for or against the " mill-dam ;" and I would make them
show their hands. [Laughter and applause.] Why, gentlemen,
after the battle at Manassas and Bull Kun, the officers and privates
of the Confederate army passed through our town on their way to
Dixie, exulting over the victory they had achieved, and some of
them had what they called Yankee heads, the entire heads of
Federal soldiers, some of them with long beards and goatees, by
which they would take them up, shake them out of the windows
of the cars, and say, " See ! here is the head of a d d soldier cap-
tured at Bull Run!" That is the spirit of secession at the South.
It is the spirit of murder, of the vile untutored savage ; it is tho



jg . PAESOIT BEOWNLOW ON THE

spirit of hell ; and he who apologizes for them is no better than those
who perpetrate the deed. [Cheers.] In Andy Johnson's town —
[three cheers for Johnson were here given] — and while Johnson's
name is' on my lips, I will make another remark or two here : If
Mr. Lincoln had consulted the Union men of Tennessee as to whom
they wanted for military Governor of the State, to a man they
would have responded, Andy Johnson. I have fought that man for
twenty -five long and terrible years : I fought him systematically,
perse veringly, and untiringly ; but it was upon the old issues of
Whiggery and Democracy, and now we will fight for one another.
[Great cheering.] We have merged in Tennessee all other parties
and predilections in this great question of the Union. [Cheers.]
We are the Union men of Tennessee, unconditional Union men — ■
[cheers] — and the miserable wretch who will attempt here or else-
where to resurrect old exploded parties and party issues, and try to
make capital out of this war, deserves the gallows and deserves death,
[Great applause.] In Andy Johnson's town they had the jail full
of prisoners, drove his family out of his house — his wife being in
the last stages of consumption — appropriated his house, carpets,
and bedding for a hospital, and his wife had to take shelter with
one of her daughters in an adjoining county, and Johnson has in
him to-night a devil as big — and «uch is in the bosom of every
Union man in Tennessee — as this pitcher ; and whenever the Fed-
eral army shall find its way there, we will shoot them down like
dogs and hang them on every limb we come to. [Applause.]
They have had their time of hanging and shooting, and our time
comes next; and I hope to God that it will not be long. I am
watching in the papers the movements of the army, and whenever
I hear that my country is captured, I intend to return post haste
and point out the rebels. [Cheers.] I have no other ambition on
earth but to resurrect the Knoxville Whig and get it in full blast,
with one hundred thousand subscribers. [Loud cheering.] And
then, as the negroes say down South, "I'll 'spress my opinion
of some of them." [Great laughter.] If I have any talent, it is
the talent to pile up epithets one upon another. [Laughter and
cheers.] In the town of Greenville, where Andrew Johnson re-
sides, they took out of the jail at one time two innocent Union
men, who had committed no ofiense on the face of the earth but
that of being Union men — Fry and his comrade. Fry was a poor
shoemaker with a wife and half a dozen children. A fellow from



SUFFEEING3 OF UNION MEN. J 9

'way Down East in Maine, by the name of Daniel Leadbeater, the
bloodiest and the most ultra man, the vilest wretch, the most unmit-
igated scoundrel that ever made a track in East Tennessee — Colonel
Daniel Leadbeater, late of the United States Army, but now a
rebel in the secession array, took these two men, tied them with
his own hands upon one limb, immediately over the railroad track,
in the town of Greenville, and ordered them to hang four days and
nights, and directed all the engineers and conductors to go by that
hanging concern slow, in a kind of snail gallop, np and down the
road, to give the passengers an opportunity to kick the rigid
bodies and strike them with a rattan. And they did it. I pledge
you my honor that on the front platform they made a business of
kicking the dead bodies as they passed by ; and the women [I will
not say the ladies, for down South we make a distinction between
ladies and women] — the women, the wives and daughters of men
in high position, waved their white handkerchiefs in triumph
through the windows of the car at the sight of the two dead bodies
hanging there. Leadbeater, for his murderous courage, was pro-
moted by Jeff Davis to the office of brigadier-general. He had
an encounter, as their own papers at Richmond state, at Bridge-
port, not long ago, with a part of General Mitchel's army, where
he got a glorious whipping. His own party turned round and
chastised him for cowardice. He had courage to hang innocent
unarmed men taken out of a jail, but he had not courage to face
the Yankees and the Northern men that were under Mitchel and
Buell. He took to his heels like a coward and scavenger as he is.*
[Applause and cheers for General Mitchel.] Our programme is
this, that when we get back into East Tennessee we will instruct
all of our friends everywhere to secure and apprehend this fellow,
Leadbeater; and our purpose is to take him to that tree and make
the widow of Fry tie the rope around his infernal neck. [Cheers.]
In the county of Knox, where I reside, and only seven miles west
of the town of Knoxville, they caught up Union men, tied them
upon logs, elevated the logs upon blocks six or ten inches from the
ground, put the men upon their breasts, tying their hands and
feet under the log, stripped their backs entirely bare, and then,
with switches, cut their backs literally to pieces, the blood running
down at every stroke. They came into court when it was in ses-
sion, and when the case was stated the judge replied: "These
are revolutionary times, and there is no remedy for anything of



20 PAESON BEOWNLOW ON THE

the kind." Hence, you see, our remedy is in our own hands; and,
with the help of guns, and swords, and sabers, we intend, God
willing, to slay them when we get back there, wherever we find
them. [Cheers.]

In the jail where I lay they were accustomed to drive up with a
cart, with an ugly, rough, flat-topped coffin upon it, surrounded by
fifteen to forty men, with bristling bayonets, as a guard, and they
marched in through the gate into the jail yard, with steady, military
tread. We trembled in our boots, for they never notified us who
was to be hanged, and you may imagine how your humble servant
felt ; for if any man in that jail, under their law, deserved the
gallows, I claim to have been the man. I knew it and they knew
it. They came sometimes with two coflins, one on each cai't, and
they took two men at a time and marched them out. A poor old
mian of sixty-five and his son of twenty-five were marched out at
one time and hanged on the same gallows. They made that poor old
man, who was a Methodist class-leader, sit by and see his son hang

till he was dead, and then they called him a d d Lincolnite

Union shrieker, and said, " Come on ; it is your turn next." He
sank, but they propped him up and led him to the halter, and
swung both off on the same gallows. They came, after that, for
another man, and they took J. C. Haum out of jail — a young man
of fine sense, good address, and of excellent character — a tall, spare-
made man, leaving a wife at home, with four or five helpless chil-
dren. My wife passed the farm of Haum the other day, when
fhey drove her out of Tennessee and sent her on to New Jersey —
I thank them kindly for doing so — and saw his wife plowing, en-
deavoring to raise corn for her suffering and starving children.
That is the spirit of secession, gentlemen. And yet you have a set
of God-forsaken, unprincipled men at the North who are apolo-
gizing for them and sympathizing with them. [Applause.] When
they took Haum out and placed him on the scaflbld, they had a
drunken chaplain. They were kind enough to notify him an hour
before the hanging that he was to hang. Haum at once made an
application for a Methodist preacher, a Union man, to come and
pray for him. They denied him the privilege, and said that God

didn't hear any prayers in behalf of any d d Union shrieker,

and he had literally to do without the benefit of clergy. But they
had near the gallows an unprincipled, drunken chaplain, of their
own army, who got up and undertook to apologize for Haum. He



SUFFEEmGS OF UNION MEN. 21

Baid : " This poor, unfortunate man, who is about to pay the debt
of nature, regrets the course he took. He said he was misled by
the Union paper." Haum rose up, and with a clear, stentorian
voice, said : "Fellow-citizens, there is not a word of truth in that
statement. I have authorized nobody to make such a statement.
"What I have said and done, I have done and said with my eyes
open, and if it were to be done over, I would do it again. I am
ready to hang, and you can execute your purposes." He died like
a man ; he died like a Union man, as an East Tennesseean ought to