Joseph E. Brown

Joseph Emerson Brown (April 15, 1821 – November 30, 1894), often referred to as Joe Brown, was the 42nd Governor of Georgia from 1857 to 1865, and a U.S. Senator from 1880 to 1891. During the American Civil War, Brown, a former Whig, had constant disagreements with Confederate President Jefferson Davis, whom he saw as an incipient tyrant.

Biography

Brown was born in Pickens County, South Carolina. At a young age he moved with his family to Union County, Georgia. In 1840, he decided to leave the farm and seek an education. Brown, with the help of his younger brother James and his father's plow horse, drove a yoke of oxen on a 125-mile trek to an academy near Anderson, South Carolina, where the impoverished Brown exchanged the oxen for eight months' board and lodging. In 1844, Brown moved to Canton, Georgia, where he served as head-master of the academy at Canton. He went on to study law, and in 1847, he opened a law office in Canton. Brown was elected to the Georgia state senate in 1849 and soon became a leader of the Democratic Party in Georgia. He was elected state circuit court judge in 1855 and governor in 1857. As governor, he diverted state railroad profits to Georgia's public schools. He became a strong supporter of secession from the United States after Lincoln's election and South Carolina's secession in 1860.

As soon as the Confederate States of America was established, Brown spoke out against expansion of the Confederate central government's powers. He denounced Davis in particular. Brown even tried to stop Colonel Francis Bartow from taking Georgia troops out of the state to the First Battle of Bull Run. He objected strenuously to military conscription by the Confederacy.^[1] After the loss of Atlanta, Brown withdrew the state's militia from the Confederate forces to harvest crops for the state and the army.^[2] When Union troops under Sherman overran much of Georgia in 1864, Brown called for an end to the war.

After the war, Brown was briefly held as a political prisoner in Washington, D.C. He was chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia from 1865 to 1870, when he resigned to become president of the Western and Atlantic Railroad. He supported President Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction policy, even becoming a Republican "scalawag" for a time. After Reconstruction, he became a Democrat again and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1880 by the state legislature, according to the laws of the time. Soon after his election to the Senate, Brown became the first Georgia official to support public education for all children—not a popular position at the time. He was re-elected in 1885, but retired in 1891 due to poor health. He died in 1894 in Atlanta, Georgia. He is buried in Oakland Cemetery.

His son, Joseph Mackey Brown, would also become governor of Georgia (twice.)

Joseph E. Brown Hall on the campus of the University of Georgia in Athens is named in his honor. The building was completed in 1932.

See also

• Confederate States of America, "Died of states' rights"

References

• Hill, Louise Biles. Joseph E. Brown and the Confederacy. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press 1972. ISBN 9780837157221
• Parks, Joseph Howard. Joseph E. Brown of Georgia. Southern biography series. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press 1977. ISBN 9780807101896
• Pelikan, Jaroslav, and Clifton Fadiman. The World treasury of modern religious thought. Boston: Little, Brown 1990. ISBN 9780316697705
• Roberts, Derrell C. Joseph E. Brown and the politics of Reconstruction. Southern historical publications, no. 16. University: University of Alabama Press 1973. ISBN 9780817352226
• Scaife, William R., and William Harris Bragg. Joe Brown's pets: the Georgia Militia, 1861-1865. Macon, Ga: Mercer University Press 2004. ISBN 9780865548831
• Wright, G. Richard and Kenneth H. Wheeler, "New Men in the Old South: Joseph E. Brown and his Associates in Georgia's Etowah Valley," Georgia Historical Quarterly 93:4 (Winter, 2009)

•  This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Joseph E. Brown at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress