Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/512

 presence, winning manners, great abilities and abounding debts.

Full of interest to strangers is a frame dwelling in East Knoxville, standing flush with the sidewalk, and entered by high steps that encroach upon the pavement. This was the home of William G. Brownlow, known as the "Fighting Parson," one of the most remarkable men in the history of Tennessee. He was a Methodist minister, an editor with a gift of invective that has never been surpassed, an ardent and fearless Unionist, the Reconstruction Governor of Tennessee, and finally United States Senator. Brownlow was a man of the Andrew Jackson type. The Southwest, and especially Tennessee, gave to public life in the first half of this century a class of men with distinctive physical, intellectual and moral qualities. Physically, they were tall, angular, rawboned; intellectually they were alert, positive and often narrow; they were honest and sincerely patriotic, but vindictive and unrelenting, the truest of friends, the most aggressive and dangerous of foes. Jackson, Brownlow and Isham G. Harris were men of this kind; Harris seemingly the last of them.

In theological and political controversy, in