GEORGIA. 



311 



and many harsh accusations were brought dur- 

 ing the campaign, among others that the retire- 

 ment of Senator Gordon was the result of a 

 bargain and sale, by which he was given a 

 remunerative employment, and Brown made 

 Senator in return for his promised support of 

 Colquitt. In the preceding election Colquitt had 

 received over 80,000 majority. In this one his 

 majority, though considerably less than those 

 of his associates on the ticket, reached over 

 54,000. The Legislature upon assembling elect- 

 ed ex -Governor Brown Senator for the unex- 

 pired term of Senator Gordon by a handsome 

 majority. 



JOSEPH EMERSON BROWN, the new Senator, 

 was born in Pickens County, South Carolina, 

 April 15, 1821. He commenced active life 

 as a lawyer in Canton, Georgia, in 1845. He 

 was elected State Senator in 1849, and a Circuit 

 Judge in 1855. In 185T he was nominated for 

 the governorship, B. H. Hill, the candidate of 

 the American party, being his opponent, and was 

 elected. He was reflected in 1859, and again 

 in 1861, remaining Governor during the war. 

 He was strongly opposed to the conscript and 

 enforcement acts of the Confederate govern- 

 ment, as being contrary to the Jeffersonian 

 principles of Democracy on which the Confed- 

 eracy was to be founded. When Georgia was 

 invaded by Sherman's army he raised a defen- 

 sive force of about 10,000, made up of State 

 officers, youths and aged men, and other classes 

 exempt from conscription, and when Jefferson 

 Davis afterward made a requisition upon him 

 for this corps he refused to send them out of 

 the State. Upon being released from the pris- 

 on in which he was confined by the Union 

 authorities after the war, he resigned the gov- 

 ernorship. In 1866 he visited Washington to 

 ascertain the position of affairs, and on his re- 

 turn expressed his views in the famous letter 

 in which he advised the Southerners to accept 

 the situation and comply with the terms of 

 reconstruction, and thus obtain representation 

 in Congress as speedily as possible. He found 

 himself almost alone in his position, and for 

 the time acted with the Republican party. He 

 took part in the Constitutional Convention of 

 1868, and was appointed by Governor Bullock 

 Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, which 

 place he resigned in 1870. He was chosen 

 President of the Western and Atlantic Railroad 

 Company, President of the Soathern Railway 

 and Steamship Association, President of the 

 Dade Coal Company, President of the At- 

 lanta Board of Education, and has been one 

 of the most active promoters of the post-bel- 

 lum development of the material resources 

 of Georgia. He voted for Greeley in 1872, 

 and has acted with the Democratic party ever 

 since. 



The results of the election gave Colquitt 

 118,349 votes for Governor, and Norwood 64,- 

 004, making Colquitt's majority 54,345. Clif- 

 ford Anderson was elected Attorney-General, 

 William A. Wright Comptrollor-General, and 



N. 0. Barnett Secretary of State, by much 

 larger majorities. 



A speech made by ex-Governor Brown be- 

 fore the Assembly, in answer to one by the 

 rival candidate, General Lawton, in advocacy 

 of his election to the United States Senate, was 

 accepted both in the North and the South as 

 defining the position of the progressive branch 

 of the Southern Democratic party. In this 

 controversy, Lawton, whose candidature was 

 favored by General Toombs and the conserva- 

 tive wing of the party, called Brown to account 

 for allying himself with the reconstructionists 

 in 1868. Brown showed that the Democratic 

 party in the next Presidential campaign, and 

 ever since, have gone beyond him by profess- 

 ing devotion to the constitutional amendments 

 and reconstruction, which he had merely ac- 

 cepted as the conditions of defeat. He quoted 

 a private letter written by Robert E. Lee, dated 

 April 3, 1867, in which the late commander of 

 the Southern army counseled the same acquies- 

 cence in reconstruction and participation in 

 the constitutional conventions which he ad- 

 vised himself. General Lee's opinion, private- 

 ly expressed to one of his former subordinates, 

 was as follows : 



I think there can be no doubt in the minds of those 

 who reflect that conventions must be held in the 

 Southern States under the Sherman bill; that the 

 people are placed in a position where no choice in the 

 matter is left them, and it is the duty of all who may 

 be entitled to vote to attend the polls and endeavor to 

 elect the best available men to represent them and act 

 for the interests of their States. The division of the 

 people into parties is greatly to be reprehended, and 

 ought to be avoided by the willingness on the part of 

 every one to yield minor points, in order to secure 

 those which are essential to the general welfare. Wis- 

 dom dictates that the decision of the Convention should 

 be cheerfully submitted to by the citizens of each State, 

 who should" unite in carrying out its decrees in good 

 faith and kind feeling. 



His policy, Senator Brown declared, would 

 be to endeavor to obtain the advantages from 

 the General Government for his State which 

 the current theory of the Constitution makes 

 possible harbor and river improvements, en- 

 couragement of agriculture and manufactures, 

 etc. ; to cultivate friendly relations with the 

 Republican Administration, and to solicit the 

 appointment of honest and capable colored 

 Georgians to Federal offices where Democrats 

 are not acceptable; and to advocate a national 

 public-school fund to be derived from the sales 

 of public lands, and to be apportioned among 

 the States in proportion to the extent of illiter- 

 acy, a plan which he thought the wealthier and 

 better educated commonwealths of the North 

 would not grudge for the improvement of the 

 South, which found itself hampered in its ef- 

 forts for progress by the mass of ignorant col- 

 ored citizens, who had been enfranchised as a 

 result of the war. The constitutional amend- 

 ments and the other results of the war must 

 be accepted finally, and the Democratic party 

 of the South must turn its back upon the Bour- 

 bons and reject the disaffected sentiments of 



