Joseph E. Brown
Joseph Emerson Brown (April 15, 1821 – November 30, 1894), often referred to as Joe Brown, was an American attorney and politician, serving as the 42nd Governor of Georgia from 1857 to 1865, the only governor to serve four terms. He also served as a United States Senator from that state from 1880 to 1891.
This article is about the Georgia governor. For the actor and comedian, see Joe E. Brown.
Joseph Emerson Brown
.png){kind=small}
A former Whig, and a firm believer in slavery and Southern states' rights, Brown was a leading secessionist in 1861, and led his state into the Confederacy. Yet he also defied the Confederate government's wartime policies: he resisted the military draft, believing that local troops should be used only for the defense of Georgia; and denounced Confederate President Jefferson Davis as an incipient tyrant, challenging Confederate impressment of animals and goods to supply the troops, and slaves to work in military encampments and on the lines. Several other governors followed his lead.
After the American Civil War, Brown joined the Republican Party for a time, and was appointed as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia from 1865 to 1870. Later he rejoined the Democrats, became president of the Western and Atlantic Railroad and began to amass great wealth; he was estimated to be a millionaire by 1880. He benefited from using convicts leased from state, county and local governments in his coal mining operations in Dade County. His Dade Coal Company bought other coal and iron companies, and by 1889 was known as the Georgia Mining, Manufacturing and Investment Company. Finally, he was twice elected by the state legislature as a U.S. Senator, serving from 1880 to 1891. During this time he was part of the Bourbon Triumvirate, alongside fellow prominent Georgia politicians John Brown Gordon and Alfred H. Colquitt.
Brown saved the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary financially in the 1870s.[1] An endowed chair in his honor, the Joseph Emerson Brown Chair of Christian Theology, was established at the institution. In 2020, the endowed chair was vacated because of Brown's position on slavery and use of the convict leasing system.[2]
Early life and education[edit]
Joseph Emerson Brown was born on April 15, 1821, in Pickens County, South Carolina, to Mackey Brown and Sally (Rice) Brown. At a young age he moved with his family to Union County, Georgia.[3] In 1840, he decided to leave the farm and seek an education. With the help of his younger brother James and their father's plow horse, Brown drove a yoke of oxen on a 125-mile trek to an academy near Anderson, South Carolina. There Brown traded the oxen for eight months' board and lodging.[4]
In 1844, Brown moved to Canton, Georgia, where he served as headmaster of the town's academy.[4] During this time, Brown boarded in the home of local businessman and Baptist minister John W. Lewis.[5] Brown paid for his room and board by tutoring the Lewis children. A friendship developed between the men, and Lewis loaned Brown money to continue his legal education.[5]
Brown went to Yale University to study law, then returned to Canton to practice. In 1847 he opened a law office in the county seat, and began to make the connections on which he built his fortune. He married Elizabeth Grisham, daughter of a major land developer. They had several children together.[6]
Brown joined the Democratic Party and was soon elected to the Georgia state senate in 1849 from the developing Etowah River valley.[7] He rapidly rose as a leader in the party. He was elected as state circuit court judge in 1855. He was a presidential elector in 1856.[8]
Governor of Georgia[edit]
First term[edit]
In 1857, at the young age of 36, Brown was elected governor of the state. He supported free public education for poor white children, believing that it was key to development of the state. He asked the state legislature to divert a portion of profits from the state-owned railroad, the Western & Atlantic, to help fund the schools.[9] Most planters did not support public education and paid for private tutors and academies for their children. The Western and Atlantic Railroad was mismanaged, and unable to produce the income Brown required to fund his public education proposal. In 1858, Governor Brown appointed John W. Lewis, his landlord and benefactor from Brown's early days in Canton, to the position of Superintendent of the state-owned railroad. Lewis was a successful businessman, and immediately undertook reforms to turn around the failing enterprise. The railroad, said to be in "dire financial straits", required the same strict economic controls Lewis had practiced in his private businesses. In the three years that Lewis ran the railroad, he was able to turn the business into a money-making enterprise, paying $400,000 per year into the state treasury.[10]
Second term[edit]
Brown easily won re-election in 1859 when he defeated a young Warren Akin Sr. (who was just beginning his political career) by a margin of 60%-40%.[11]
Brown was a slave owner; in 1850, he owned five slaves.[12] By 1860 when he was governor, he owned a total of 19 slaves and several farms in Cherokee County, Georgia.[13]
Brown became a strong supporter of secession from the United States after Abraham Lincoln's election and South Carolina's secession in 1860. He feared that Lincoln would abolish slavery. Considering it the basis of the South's lucrative plantation economy, he called upon Georgians to oppose the efforts to end slavery:
Later political service and business career[edit]
Brown was first elected to the United States Senate by the state legislature in 1880, taking office on May 26, 1880. He was re-elected in 1885, and retired in 1891 due to poor health.[3]
While Brown's political supporters claimed that he "came to Atlanta on foot with less than a dollar in his pocket after the war and ... made himself all that he is by honest and laborious methods",[27] most of his enterprises stemmed from his political connections. He amassed a fortune, in part through the use of convicts leased from state, county and local government in his coal mining operations in Dade County.[28] His use of leased convict labor began in 1874 and continued until his death in 1894, a period that coincided with "the high tide of the convict lease system in Georgia".[28]
The convict lease system was first authorized during the period of Reconstruction, under military governor and Union general Thomas H. Ruger, who issued the first convict lease in April 1868.[29] It was expanded during the post-Reconstruction era, when the Democratic-dominated state legislature passed new laws criminalizing a range of behavior. State prisoners who were unable to pay fines, levied as part of their conviction, faced the possibility of being leased out by the state, as convict labor.
In 1880 Brown, whose fortune was estimated conservatively at one million dollars, netted $98,000 (~$2.66 million in 2023) from the Dade Coal Company. By 1886, Dade Coal was a parent company, owning Walker Iron and Coal, Rising Fawn Iron, Chattanooga Iron, and Rogers Railroad and Ore Banks, and leasing Castle Rock Coal Company. An 1889 reorganization resulted in the formation of the Georgia Mining, Manufacturing and Investment Company. This rested largely on a foundation of convict labor.[29] The system has been likened by journalist Douglas A. Blackmon to "slavery by another name," in his book by that title.[30]
A legislative committee visited Brown's mines during the same year that Brown sold them. They reported that the convict laborers were "in the very worst condition ... actually being starved and have not sufficient clothing ... treated with great cruelty."[31] Of particular note to the visiting officials was that the mine claimed to have replaced whipping with the water cure torture—in which water was poured into the nostrils and lungs of the prisoners—because it allowed miners to "go to work right away" after punishment.[31] However, it was not established if these practices were in place at the time that Brown sold the mine, or were instituted by the mine's new owner Joel Hurt.
This article incorporates from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
