Biography
William Gannaway 'Parson' Brownlow was a Tennessee Unionist, Methodist preacher, and editor of the Knoxville Whig, through which he fiercely opposed secession and the Confederacy in East Tennessee. After Tennessee joined the Confederacy, his pro-Union editorials made him a target of Confederate authorities. On December 6, 1861, as he prepared to leave Knoxville, he was arrested and jailed on a charge of treason by Knox County Commissioner Robert B. Reynolds and Confederate States District Attorney John Crozier Ramsey, and held in the Knox County jail. After Confederate Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin intervened, Brownlow was released from jail in late December 1861, and Confederate authorities — wary of making him a Unionist martyr — ordered his expulsion rather than risk a trial. He crossed into Union-controlled territory near Nashville on March 3, 1862, and in the North became a celebrated symbol of Unionist resistance. He was never tried or convicted, and later served as Governor of Tennessee (1865-1869) and a United States Senator (1869-1875).
