Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 3.djvu/175

 PROMINENT PERSONS

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for Congressman Ely, of New York. During the war he was a member of the staff cf Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson. After the war ht was engaged in various railroad enter- prises. He was a member of the West Vir- ginia constitutional convention in 1872, and 'vas elected from that state, as a Demo- crat, to the forty-fourth congress (March 4 1875-March 3, 1877). He died in Boyd- \ille, West Virginia, November i, 1884.

Conrad, Charles M., born at Winchester, Virginia, about 1804. In his infancy his parents removed to Mississippi and then to Louisiana. He received a liberal education, studied law, was admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1828, and practiced in New Orleans, tor several years he was a member of the state legislature ; and was elected to the United States senate to fill the unexpired term of Alexander Mouton, resigned, and served from April 14, 1842, to March 3, 1843. He was a member of the state con- stitutional convention of 1844, was elected to congress in i8-|8, and served till Au- gust, 1850. when he was appointed secre- tarv of war by President Fillmore, serving as such from August 13, 1850, to March 7, 1853. He was a leader of the secession movement in Louisiana in December, 1800, and was a delegate from Louisiana to the provisional congress held in Montgomery. Alabama, in 1861. He was a member of the first and second congresses of the Confed- eracy, and from 1862 to 1864 served in the Confederate army as brigadier-general. He died in New Orleans, Louisiana, February II, 1878.

Brownlow, William Gannaway, born in Wythe county, Virginia, August 29, 1803. Early orphaned, he had to make his own

way in life, and by working as a carpenter I'aid his way in school, and acquired a fair education. He became a Methodist minis- ter and for several years after 1826, travelled extensively through Tennessee and South Carolina, preaching, at the same time taking an active part in politics, and in South Caro- lina he made himself obnoxious by his op- position to nullification. In 1838 he be- came editor of the "Kno-xville (Tennessee) Whig," in which he so unsparingly criti- cised his political opponents, that he gained the sobriquet of "the fighting parson." In 1843 he was a candidate for congress, and was defeated by Andrew Johnson. In 1850, under appointment by President Fillmore, he was one of the government commis- sioners on the improvement of western rivers. In 1858 he published a work which had a large vogue— "The Great Iron Wheel Examined and its Spokes Extracted," being an answer to "The Great Iron Wheel, or Republicanism backwards, and Christianity Reversed," published two years before by- Rev. J. R. Graves, a Baptist minister, and editor. In 1858, in Philadelphia, in a public discussion with Rev. A. Prynne, of New York, he upheld slavery as divinely right, as well as expedient. In i860, nevertheless, he took a prominent stand against seces- sion. He refused to remove the United States flag from his house or office, or to take the oath of allegiance to the Confed- erate government, and in October, 1861, his paper was suppressed, and he left the state, passing over into North Carolina. In De- cember of the same year he returned, was arrested on a charge of treason, when he was released from jail, but held under guard in his home until March, 1862, when he was sent into the Union lines at Nashville, his