John Calvin Brown was an American governor of Tennessee. He is noted for his service as Governor of Tennessee from 1871 to 1875, and also for writing the current Tennessee State Constitution.
Background
John Calvin Brown was born on January 6, 1827 in Giles County, Tennessee, and died at Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee. His parents, Duncan Brown and Margaret Smith Brown, both of Scotch-Irish descent, were strict Presbyterians and belonged to the small-farmer class of western North Carolina. His grandfather, Angus Brown, had emigrated from Scotland and had fought in the American Revolution under Francis Marion. An older brother, Neill S. Brown, was governor of Tennessee in 1847-49. John Calvin Brown was known by his contemporaries as one of the best-educated men of his section.
Education
John attended the country schools and later Jackson College at Columbia, Tennessee, where he was graduated in 1846. It is said that he spoke both Latin and French. He studied law with his brother Neill, was admitted to the bar in Pulaski in 1848, and soon had a good practise in Giles County and in the surrounding counties.
Career
His health becoming impaired by too much hard work, so he decided to travel and made a tour of North America, England, the Continent, Palestine, and Egypt, returning just before the Civil War began. At the beginning of the war, though he had been opposed to secession, Brown enlisted in the Confederate service as a private, was soon made captain, and on May 16, 1861, became colonel of the 3rd Tennessee Infantry.
Captured at Fort Donelson, he was for a time imprisoned in Fort Warren, Boston Harbor, but was exchanged in August 1862. He was then made a brigadier-general and in 1864 a majorgeneral. His command was engaged in the Kentucky and Tennessee campaigns under Bragg, and in the Georgia and later Tennessee campaigns under Johnston and Hood. He was wounded in the battle of Perryville, had a horse killed under him at Missionary Ridge, and while leading a charge in the battle of Franklin was again seriously wounded. For a time he was disfranchised under the Brownlow regime in Tennessee, but his Whig antecedents gave him influence with the moderate Unionists and his war record aided him with those Democrats who were permitted to vote. In 1869 he was elected to the state legislature, and in 1870 was made president of the state constitutional convention where he exerted a strong influence in the making of a new constitution for Tennessee. Largely on account of his work in the constitutional convention Brown was elected governor of Tennessee on the Democratic ticket in 1870 and was reëlected in 1872.
His task was to reduce to order the economic and political chaos following war and reconstruction. He secured the payment of the floating debt of $3, 000, 000, and reduced the bonded debt, but had to leave unsolved the problem of what bonded debts were legal and what were fraudulent. While governor he sponsored a constructive railroad policy and secured legislation authorizing the consolidation of the smaller lines.
Among other constructive measures of his administration were the reorganization of the state prisons, the revision of the system of Chancery courts, the establishment of a state system of public schools, a better apportionment of the state into congressional and legislative districts. His stand on the state debt brought him defeat in 1875 when he was a candidate for the United States Senate against Andrew Johnson.
He then returned for a short time to his law practise, but soon entered the railroad business in which he remained until his death. Immediately after the close of the war he had become interested in some of the short lines in Middle Tennessee and was president of the Nashville Railway.
This experience and the railroad legislation framed by him when governor caused him to be made vice-president of the Texas & Pacific Railway in 1876, in charge of the construction, the politics, and the legal interests of the road in Washington, D. C. , and in Texas. He built the road east to New Orleans and west to the Rio Grande. One of his chief opponents in railway policy was C. P. Huntington. When Jay Gould acquired the Texas & Pacific in 1880, Brown was retained in charge, and in 1881 he was made general solicitor of the half-dozen Gould roads west of the Mississippi.
He was made receiver of the Texas & Pacific in 1885, and three years later president; he practically rebuilt the road. A few months before his death in 1889, he returned to Tennessee as president of the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Company.
Achievements
Brown fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War, eventually rising to the rank of major general. Being a leader of the state's Bourbon Democrats, Brown dedicated much of his time as governor to solving the state's mounting debt issues. Following his gubernatorial tenure, he advocated railroad construction, briefly serving as president of the Texas & Pacific Railroad in 1888, and as president of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company in 1889.
Politics
Brown was a moderate in his political views, and frank and outspoken on all public questions, but he was not a successful politician. He made a good business governor and gave the state a constructive administration.
Though a Whig, like his older brother, and a follower of John Bell, Brown was never a candidate for office before 1860 when he was an elector on the Bell and Everett ticket and made a vigorous canvass in opposition to secession and Republicanism, occupying, like nearly all Whigs, a middle ground between the extreme Democrats and the Republicans.
Views
As a lawyer his arguments were notable for ability, learning, and eloquence. His claim to remembrance rests upon his military career and upon his constructive work as governor of Tennessee and as a western railroad builder.
Personality
John Calvin Brown was a man of strong and attractive personality.
Connections
John Calvin Brown was married twice: first to Ann Pointer of Pulaski, who died leaving no children; and second to Elizabeth Childress of Murfreesboro, by whom he had four children: Marie, Daisy, Elizabeth, and John C. Brown, Jr.
