- 401 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
WINNER OF THE TENNESSEE HISTORY BOOK AWARD
John Calvin Brown was a Confederate general, Tennessee politician, railroad executive, and lawyer, and yet he is little known to today’s Americans. He left behind few personal papers and died relatively young despite his remarkably productive life, leaving his voice silent while historical debate raged over events in which he was a significant player.
John C. Brown of Tennessee is the first full-scale biography of this understudied figure. Author Sam Davis Elliott’s comprehensive research reveals how Brown rose to the rank of general in the Confederate Army of Tennessee. A five-time wounded veteran of nearly every one of the army’s battles from Fort Donelson to Franklin, Brown played a unique utility role as a division commander in the 1864 Atlanta Campaign. There is a substantial likelihood he was an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan after the war, but more well-established is his role as leader in the anti-Brownlow movement that sought to end Radical Reconstruction in Tennessee. He was selected president of the 1870 constitutional convention, which helped lead to his election as governor later that year. After his tumultuous time as governor seeking to resolve economic conflicts that began before the Civil War, he became a railroad executive and industrialist. He had a significant role in the struggle between rival financiers for control of the southern route to the Pacific, and was in the front lines of management on behalf of the Texas and Pacific Railroad during the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886. His wide-ranging and successful career reflects not only the attributes of Brown’s character, but provides insight into many key events of nineteenth-century America.
John C. Brown of Tennessee fills not only a biographical but a historiographical gap in the literature on the Civil War and Reconstruction in Tennessee and the post-Confederate South.
Sam Davis Elliott is a practicing attorney in Chattanooga. He is the author of Isham G. Harris of Tennessee and Soldier of Tennessee: General Alexander P. Stewart and the Civil War in the West, and the editor of Doctor Quintard, Chaplain C.S.A. and Second Bishop of Tennessee.
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Table of contents
- Contents
- Preface
- 1. Desires the Perpetuity and Integrity of Our Union: 1827-1861
- 2. Fellow Victims of the Fatal Blunder: Early Service and the Campaigns of 1862
- 3. Boys, Them Damn Yanks Can’t Whip You: The Campaigns of 1863
- 4. A Military Convenience . . . in All the Hard Places: The Atlanta Campaign, 1864
- 5. The Slaughter in Our Ranks Was Frightful: September 1864 to May 1865
- 6. To Liberate . . . the True and Chivalrous Citizens: June 1865 to October 1871
- 7. To Improve the Present and Secure the Future: October 1871 to December 1875
- 8. So as to Confer the Greatest Blessings to the Whole South: 1876–1879
- 9. I Have Great Faith in the Outcome of the Texas and Pacific: 1880–1889
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index