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Now Ready! Just the Book for the Times. Will be Published, April 29th, 1862, The Portrait and Biography of Parson Brownlow.

Cincinnati: Mumford & Co., publishers and wholesale stationers, 38 & 40 West Fourth St., [1862]. Broadside, 12.25” x 8”.

An unrecorded publisher’s broadside promoting Parson Brownlow’s autobiography and a Civil War pocket map.

Published a year before Brownlow returned to Union-occupied Tennessee where he later became governor in 1865, The Portrait and Biography of Parson Brownlow (Indianapolis: Asher & Co., 1862) also included Brownlow’s last editorial in the Knoxville Whig and “his recent speeches rehearsing his experience with secession, and his prison life.” Mumford & Co. announce here they “want every book agent in the country to engage in its sale. Send in your orders early, as it will sell very rapidly. Retail price 25 cents.”

The other work promoted here is The Historical Pocket War Map, “showing, at a glance, the exact location of every Battlefield up to the present time. Likewise, in a good, plain type, on the margin, is given a comprehensive authentic account of each battle, the name and number of Regiments engaged, from what State, &c. Also, the number of killed and wounded, and which army were victorious.” The map is “complete and reliable for the entire southern states and coast,” and the publishers “take pleasure in offering this work to the public, knowing at this time it will be appreciated fully by those who may be familiar with the workings of our Army and Navy.” A specimen copy was available for 30 cts. Mumford & Co. additionally advertise their wholesale paper and envelopes, which they call to the attention of country merchants, postmasters, and peddlers.

Born in Virginia, William "Parson" Brownlow (1805–1877) was a newspaper publisher and politician. Moving with his family from Virginia to Tennessee, Brownlow was orphaned there at age eleven and in 1826 entered the Methodist ministry—working for the next decade as an itinerant preacher. In 1838, he started working as editor of the Tennessee Whig (1838), the Jonesboro Whig, the Independent (1839–49), and the Knoxville Whig (1849–69 and 1875–77). Fervently pro-Union, Brownlow ridiculed secession until Confederate authorities suppressed the Knoxville Whig, causing him to flee in 1861. Brownlow’s press and type were demolished—putting an end to the South’s last pro-Union paper—and rebel secretary of war Judah Benjamin banished Brownlow to the North. Here Brownlow enjoyed a successful lecture tour and wrote a book, Sketches of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of Secession (1862), in addition to the present work.

When eastern Tennessee came under the control of Union forces in 1863, Brownlow returned there and helped restore civil government. In 1865 he was elected governor of the state, serving between 1865–69. Determined to punish pro-secessionists, he advocated disenfranchising those who took up arms against the Union, and also mobilized 1,600 state guards in order to quash the newly-organized Ku Klux Klan. In spite of poor health, he was elected to a second term, and near the end of his second term as governor he was elected to the U.S. Senate (1869–75). His policies as governor helped Tennessee become in 1866 the first ex-Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union. Brownlow also used his powers as governor to grant male African-American ex-slaves the right to vote and qualify as candidates for public offices in Tennessee. In 1875 he returned to Knoxville and bought back the Knoxville Whig (which he sold in 1869); he edited the paper until shortly before his death.

No copies of this broadside recorded in Worldcat.

REFERENCES: William G. Brownlow at britannica.com.

CONDITION: Very good, light wear, light fraying along bottom-left margin.

Item #6945

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