James Patton Brownlow was a Union Army officer during the American Civil War. Brownlow was the son of East Tennessee preacher and politician Parson Brownlow. James P. Brownlow served in several positions in the Union Army, finishing the war as colonel of the 1st Tennessee Cavalry Regiment. He was noted for his courage and perceptiveness in battle and keen sense of military tactics. Union cavalry in Tennessee, in addition to participating in crucial organized battles of the war, "primarily meant almost endless skirmishing with partisans, guerrillas, and bushwackers, as well as with the Rebel raiders of John Hunt Morgan, Joseph Wheeler, and Nathan Bedford Forrest, who frequently recruited and supplied themselves from behind enemy lines." Jim Brownlow's deft handling of these engagements left him with a reputation as "one of the greatest daredevils of the Civil War."
James Patton Brownlow
Colonel Brownlow on a Picket Hunt — Sketched by Theodore R. Davis (Harper's Weekly, August 13, 1864): Another illustration on this page represents Colonel Jim Brownlow with a small party of men in Georgia costume, crossing the Chattahoochee to capture the rebel pickets. The expedition was a successful one, but it broke up the friendly communication which had been for several days established between the pickets across the river. This was before SHERMAN had crossed. The morning after the occurrence notice was given of the changed situation by a Reb yelling out across the stream: "Hello, Yank!" "What do you want, Johnny?" "Can't talk to you'uns any more!" "How is that?" "Orders to dry up!" "What for, Johnny?" "Oh! Jim Brownlow, with his d-d Tennessee Yanks, swam over upon the left last night, and stormed our rifle-pits naked—captured sixty of our boys, and made 'em swim back with him. We 'uns have got to keep you'uns on your side of the river now."
James P. Brownlow
Belle Cliffe Brownlow (1849-1878)
William Gannaway "Parson" Brownlow was an American newspaper publisher, Methodist minister, book author, prisoner of war, lecturer, and politician who served as the 17th 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.
Parson Brownlow
Engraving from Brownlow's book The Great Iron Wheel Examined, showing a Baptist minister changing clothes in front of horrified women after administering a baptism by immersion.
Ad in an 1848 issue of the Jonesborough Whig, attacking presidential candidate Lewis Cass
Brownlow as he appeared on the frontispiece of his 1856 book, The Great Iron Wheel Examined
