The Whig was a polemical American newspaper published and edited by William G. "Parson" Brownlow (1805–1877) in the mid-nineteenth century. As its name implies, the paper's primary purpose was the promotion and defense of Whig Party political figures and ideals. In the years leading up to the Civil War, the Whig became the mouthpiece for East Tennessee's anti-secessionist movement. The Whig was published under several names throughout its existence, namely the Tennessee Whig, the Elizabethton Whig. the Jonesborough Whig, the Knoxville Whig, and similar variations.
The Whig was one of the most influential newspapers in nineteenth-century Tennessee, due mainly to Brownlow's editorials, which often included vindictive personal attacks and fierce diatribes. A Methodist circuit rider by trade, Brownlow partnered with publisher Mason R. Lyon under a one-year contract and launched the Whig on May 4, 1839 to counter rising Democratic sentiment in the region."Early History of Carter County 1760-1861," p.55. Frank Merritt. East Tennessee Historical Society, Knoxville, Tennessee. 1950. He quickly made many enemies across the majority Democratic antebellum South. During his career, Brownlow survived several assassination attempts, numerous libel lawsuits, and arrest and imprisonment by Confederate authorities during the American Civil War.
Brownlow's Whig editorials attacked Democrats and Methodism's two main competitors in East Tennessee: Baptists and Presbyterians. Brownlow also attacked groups who he believed supported Democrats, such as Catholics, Mormons, and immigrants. In spite of its anti-secessionist sentiments, the Whig was staunchly pro-slavery in the early days of the Civil War but, upon Brownlow's return from exile in 1863, the paper adopted an abolitionist stance.Robert McKenzie, Lincolnites and Rebels: A Divided Town in the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). After Brownlow was elected governor in 1865, his son became publisher of the Whig. In 1870, Whig reporter William Rule (1839–1928) launched the Knoxville Chronicle (later renamed Knoxville Journal), which is often considered the "successor" to the Whig.
Layout and publication
The Whig was a typical nineteenth-century broadsheet, usually containing four pages, each divided into five (later six) columns. Editorials and news typically occupied the first two-and-a-half pages, and advertisements occupied the last page-and-a-half. The first column often began with a song or poem, after which Brownlow launched into an editorial. Along with political and religious commentary, Brownlow also reported on his travels to various cities, dispensed advice on issues such as marriage and child-rearing, and published his own speeches in their entirety.Jonesborough Whig and Independent Journal, 15 October 1845, 3 December 1845, 29 July 1846, et al.
The masthead used for the first few issues included the phrase "Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" from the Declaration of Independence, and was soon followed by the motto, "Cry aloud, and spare not," taken from Isaiah 58:1 (KJV). The latter appeared in the paper's nameplate as early as 1839, and was used throughout much of the 1840s. In 1853, Brownlow began using the motto, "Independent in everything, neutral in nothing." For several months after the 1840 elections, the paper used Oliver Hazard Perry's famous line, "We have met the enemy, and they are ours," as its nameplate motto.
Titles The Whig was published under the following masthead titles:
Tennessee Whig (May 16, 1839 in Elizabethton – June 13, 1839) The Elizabethton Whig (June 13, 1839 in Elizabethton – nameplate change) The Whig (May 6, 1840 – November 3, 1841) Jonesborough Whig (November 10, 1841 – May 11, 1842) Jonesborough Whig and Independent Journal (May 18, 1842 – April 19, 1849) Brownlow's Knoxville Whig and Independent Journal (May 19, 1849 – April 7, 1855) Brownlow's Knoxville Whig (April 14, 1855 – July 27, 1861) Brownlow's Weekly Whig (August 3, 1861 – October 26, 1861) Brownlow's Knoxville Whig, and Rebel Ventilator (November 11, 1863 – February 21, 1866) Brownlow's Knoxville Whig (February 28, 1866 – January 27, 1869) Knoxville Weekly Whig (February 3, 1869 – March 1870) Weekly Whig and Register (c. 1870 – 1871)
Views
Politics
In an 1842 description of the Whig, Brownlow wrote, "politically, we are WHIG— ultra whig, and of the old school— the 'sworn and eternal foe of locofocoism.'"Jonesborough Whig, 11 May 1842. Brownlow despised President Andrew Jackson, calling him the "greatest curse that ever yet befell this nation."Jonesborough Whig and Independent Journal, 18 June 1845. The Whig supported, among other things, a strong central government, federal funding for internal improvements, a weakened presidency, a national bank, and tariffs to protect American products from foreign competition.
As Brownlow's political idol was Kentucky senator Henry Clay, the publisher pleaded with the Whig Party to make Clay its presidential candidate. He became disenchanted when the party snubbed Clay in favor of William Henry Harrison in 1840 and by 1842, Brownlow had turned outright hostile toward Harrison's successor, John Tyler. After Clay's defeat in the presidential election of 1844, Brownlow was grief-stricken. When the party snubbed Clay in favor of Zachary Taylor in 1848, Brownlow called on Whig electors to vote for Clay instead.
In the presidential election of 1852, Brownlow rejected Whig candidate Winfield Scott and supported Daniel Webster, although the Massachusetts senator died before the election. After the Whig Party disintegrated in 1854, Brownlow aligned with the Know Nothing movement, and intensified his attacks on non-Anglo American immigrants. In 1860, after the secession debate had come to dominate politics in the region, the Whig supported Constitutional Union presidential candidate John Bell, helping him capture the state's electoral votes. After the war, the Whig became one of the few papers in the South to support the Radical Republicans.
Religion
While Clay was Brownlow's political idol, Methodism founder John Wesley was his theological idol. Brownlow consistently refuted Wesley's critics, and two of his favorite targets were Presbyterian minister F. A. Ross and Baptist preacher J. R. Graves. In 1847, the Whig ran a continuous column entitled "Frederick Ross's Corner," which bashed Ross's character.
In the 1840s, as Northern and Southern Methodists argued over the slavery issue, Brownlow was offended by what he perceived as poor treatment of Southern Methodist leaders, especially Bishop Joshua Soule (who had ordained Brownlow as minister). When Northern Methodist leader Thomas Bond called for missionaries to be sent to the South, Brownlow warned that such missionaries would be lynched. "The people of the South," he wrote, "cannot regard such men, whatever may be their claims to the character, as true and faithful ministers of Christianity."Jonesborough Whig and Independent Journal, 29 October 1845.
Brownlow's anti-Catholic sentiment was present in the earliest editions of the Whig, and gradually intensified over the years. In 1846, Brownlow ran a multi-part series on "Romanism" in America, claiming that the Catholic Church had kept Europe in "mental slavery" for 1,200 years, and was inherently intolerant and opposed to democracy.Jonesborough Whig and Independent Journal, 25 February 1846. Brownlow referred to Catholics as "lousy, sinful, obedient subjects of a foreign Despot," and warned of their encroachment into American government.Jonesborough Whig and Independent Journal, 25 March 1846.
Secessionism
In January 1860, Brownlow asked Whig readers to "pray against the wicked leaders of Abolitionism and the equally ungodly advocates of Secessionism,"William G. Brownlow, Sketches of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of Secession: with a Narrative of Personal Adventures Among the Rebels (Philadelphia: G. W. Childs, 1862). a statement which sums up his pre-Civil War stance on both issues. Brownlow believed an independent South would continue to be run by the elite - Southern Democratic plantation owners, who would exploit small farmers. "The honest yeomanry of these border States," he wrote, "whose families live by their hard licks, four-fifths of whom own no negroes and never expect to own any, are to be drafted" to fight for the "purse-proud aristocrats of the Cotton States."
While Brownlow had supported Bell in 1860, he praised Lincoln as an "Old Clay Whig," and argued that opposition to him had more to do with sectionalism than with slavery. He blasted the state of South Carolina (the first state to secede) as the "home of traitors," and claimed that most South Carolinians were descended from Revolutionary War Loyalists, and thus had a love of aristocracy that "will never suit Tennesseeans."
Slavery Brownlow's views on slavery were complex, and changed over time. In the 1830s, he was opposed to slavery, but for obscure reasons, had changed his mind by the following decade. Historian Robert McKenzie suggests that the hostility of Northern Methodists (who were abolitionists) toward Southern Methodists (who tended to be pro-slavery) in the 1840s may have driven Brownlow into the pro-slavery camp. In any case, by the 1850s, Brownlow was staunchly pro-slavery, arguing that the institution had been "ordained by God."
Brownlow's support for slavery remained unchanged throughout 1860 and 1861, and he and rival editors accused one another of secretly supporting abolitionism. In Parson Brownlow's Book, published in 1862, Brownlow maintains his support of slavery, but clarified that he would do away with it if it meant preserving the Union. By April 1864, however, he had adopted an abolitionist viewpoint, and led a faction calling for emancipation at a gathering of East Tennessee Unionists. After the meeting, he gave a speech in support of a series of resolutions that deemed slavery "incompatible with the perpetuity of free and republican institutions."
History
Early publication As a Methodist circuit rider in the 1820s, Brownlow gained a reputation for vicious personal attacks against rival missionaries as they competed for converts across Southern Appalachia, and as early as 1828 Brownlow had been in court facing a slander charge. In the mid-1830s, Brownlow anonymously wrote several articles attacking nullification for the Washington Republican and Farmer's Journal, a Jonesborough-based paper published by retired state supreme court justice Thomas Emmerson (1773–1837). Impressed, Emmerson suggested Brownlow leave the ministry to pursue a career in journalism.Paul Fink, Jonesborough: The First Century of Tennessee's First Town (Johnson City, Tenn.: Overmountain Press, 2002), pp. 140-145.
After his marriage in 1839, Brownlow settled in Elizabethton, and began looking for steady income to support his family. T. A. R. Nelson, then a local attorney, suggested Brownlow publish a newspaper to support the Whigs in the upcoming elections.Thomas Alexander, "Strange Bedfellows: The Interlocking Careers of T.A.R. Nelson, Andrew Johnson, and William G. (Parson) Brownlow." East Tennessee Historical Society Publications, No. 24 (1952), p. 72. Brownlow formed a partnership with Mason R. Lyon, who had assumed publication of the Republican after Emmerson's death. The first edition of the Tennessee Whig was published on May 16, 1839, with Brownlow as editor and Lyon as publisher. Within a few months, Brownlow's vitriolic editorial style had left Elizabethton bitterly divided.