Joseph E. Brown: Confederate Counter Revolutionary
Ben Parten
Mr. Welborn
Hist. 4072: U.S. Civil War
Fall 2013
The office of governor is the central authority in the political sphere of a state. Joseph E.
Brown, governor of Georgia during the Civil War, used that authority to exert secessionist
sentiments and states’ rights ideals over his political domain. However, just as the office of
governor is fundamental to the political body of a state, so too was the state of Georgia in the
newly formed Confederate States of America. The Confederacy, formed at a time of crisis,
demanded that centralized authority and power be ceded from the individual states to sustain
their collective survival as a political entity through military victory in war. Brown’s role as
governor of Georgia placed him in a prominent political position within the Confederacy, yet his
dedication to states’ rights ideals created a discrepancy between his goals for Georgia and
President Jefferson Davis’s goals for the Confederate States of America. Historian Alexander C.
Niven claims that Brown “obstructed, hindered, delayed and defeated the bold schemes of the
Southern Revolution and, finally, had in no small measure contributed to the downfall of the
Confederacy.”1 Brown’s resolution to resist the centralizing policies of the Davis Administration
and the Confederate Government under the auspices of states’ rights made him an enigmatic
character in the history of the Civil War. On one hand Brown was an ideological zealot devoted
to his political doctrines, while on the other, he is merely a confederate obstructionist; both
evaluations confirm that his actions led to a series of confrontations with the Davis
Administration and impeded the Confederacy’s success.2
The paradox created between Joseph Brown’s grip on his states’ rights philosophy and
the growing centralization of the Confederate Government is emblematic of his political
philosophy in the prewar period. Brown entered the scene of Georgia politics as a clandestine
1
Alexander C. Niven, "Joseph E. Brown, Confederate Obstructionist," Georgia Historical Quarterly 42, no. 3
(1958) 233.
2
Alexander C. Niven, “Joseph E. Brown, Confederate Obstructionist,” 233.
figure during the gubernatorial election of 1857. The Democratic Party in Georgia, embroiled in
the controversy surrounding Kansas, was split over whom was to represent them in the coming
election. In order to stave off the rising American Party, or more commonly known as the
Know-Nothings, the Democrats needed to nominate a man who could fulfill two primary needs.
The first need was to distance the party from the ostensibly weak Buchanan administration. The
second was to hold onto Democratic popularity in North Georgia where Know-Nothing
sentiments were the strongest.3 If the Know-Nothings continued to make inroads in the yeoman
dominated upcountry, the Democratic alliance of southern planters and upcountry yeoman
farmers could be severed, weakening the Democrats control of the state.
As the convention commenced the candidate remained uncertain. After days of “appeals,
trades, filibusters, the injection of other names, and unsuccessful attempts to abandon the two
thirds rule,” Louise Biles Hill claims bleakly, “the convention seemed permanently
deadlocked.”4 After the twentieth ballot it was decided that no clear nominee would emerge, and
a compromise was struck that allowing twenty-four person committee decide the nominee.
Inside the committee, Linton Stephens, a former Whig turned Democrat, targeted Brown as a
possible candidate to break the deadlock and protect the interests of the planter class. To
Stephens, Brown exemplified everything the party and the slaveholders who led the party needed
in a candidate. Brown’s stance as a strong southern rights man during the Compromise of 1850
would win over support with the radical southern slaveholders, and Brown’s North Georgia
background would pacify the moderate upcountry voters. In a bizarre development within the
3
Wallace T. Hettle,"An Ambiguous Democrat: Joseph Brown and Georgia's Road to Secession." The Georgia
Historical Quarterly no. 3 (1997): 577-592. JSTOR Arts & Sciences VIII. 584.
4
Louise Biles Hill, Joseph E. Brown and the Confederacy. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1939. 6.
committee, Stephens was able to procure enough verbal votes among the committee comprised
of mostly southern slaveholders to give Brown the nomination before the ballots were officially
tallied.5 Stephens’s actions inside the committee illustrates the political motivations and “stark
dichotomy between yeoman democracy and aristocratic planter hegemony” that dominated
southern antebellum politics.6 To Stephens, Brown was nothing more than an instrument needed
to maintain the political status quo. Nevertheless, by way of a “viva voce” vote, Joseph E. Brown
paradoxically entered the Georgia gubernatorial race as both the protector of the planter class and
the champion of the upcountry yeoman farmer.7
In the general election against the Know-Nothing nominee, Benjamin Hill, both Brown’s
political ideology and personal ambiguity was displayed. “While Brown’s rise to power
coincided with the interest of Whiggish Democrats such as Stephens, he took his role as man of
the people seriously,” claims Hettle, “yet his radicalism had its limits: Brown opposed specific
abuses of corporate power, not the entire system.”8 Brown’s opposition to corporate abuses
endeared him to the upcountry yeoman voter and led him on a Jacksonian assault against the
state’s banks. To Brown, “the bank represented the forces of privilege and state-driven
development that had become increasingly threatening to the yeomanry in Georgia and
elsewhere.”9 Yet, despite his stance on the banks, Brown proved to be very sympathetic to the
progressive minded former Whigs behind state driven development of Georgia’s railroads. This
contradicting political stance is even further convoluted by his devotion to states’ rights which
won him favor among the radical Democrats bent on protecting slavery.
5
Louise Biles Hill, Joseph E. Brown and the Confederacy, 7-8.
Wallace T. Hettle, “An Ambiguous Democrat: Joseph Brown and Georgia’s Road to Secession” 579.
7
Louise Biles Hill, Joseph E. Brown and the Confederacy, 8.
8
Wallace T. Hettle, “An Ambiguous Democrat: Joseph Brown and Georgia’s Road to Secession” 586.
9
Wallace T. Hettle, “An Ambiguous Democrat: Joseph Brown and Georgia’s Road to Secession” 586.
6
While Brown’s ambiguity is a detraction in understanding his true political positions, it
proved to be a valuable asset in his campaign. His appeal to such a large bloc of voters allowed
him to defeat Benjamin Hill by a majority of over ten thousand votes.10 Linton Stephens’s plan
to reaffirm the Democratic Party in Georgia had succeeded. However, in the midst of the
political machinations during the campaign, Stephens did not consider how Brown fit into the
equation of secession that was looming in 1857. He knew Brown’s strong states’ rights ideology
would be a major force in deciding Georgia’s fate once secession was established, but Stephens
had no idea Brown’s devotion to states’ rights would be a detraction the administrating ability of
the Confederate Government
As soon as secession materialized and the ordinances of secession were signed, Joseph
Brown’s dispute with the Davis administration began. In a letter to General H. C. Wayne on
April 22nd, 1861, a mere nine days after Fort Sumter was surrendered, Brown defiantly
repudiated the government is Montgomery over the placement of war goods:
Mr. Walker of the W. & A. R. R. has just telegraphed me that the chief ordinance officer
at Montgomery has just ordered him to ship all guns, shells &c, intended for Savannah, to
Montgomery, to which I have sent Mr. Walker this reply: “Send them to Savannah. They are
mine not his. The confederate states government has not sent a gun or shot or shell to Savannah.
They cannot order off those I send there.”11
This statement of autonomy is representative of both Brown’s willingness to defy the Davis
Administration and his perceived power as governor. Brown felt that, like the president, he held
10
Louise Biles Hill, Joseph E. Brown and the Confederacy, 19.
Joseph E. Brown, Letter to Genl. H. C. Wayne, 22 Apr. 1861, Elijah Alexander Brown, Ed, Joseph E. Brown
Papers, MS 95, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries, 646.
11
the power to act as commander and chief of Georgia’s troops and military capital. As
commander and chief, his main objective was to protect Savannah from a possible invasion. In
order to protect the coast and appease the Confederacy’s War Department, Brown took the
defense of Georgia into his own hands. Since “very little expenditure has been made by the
Confederate government to place Georgia in a defensive position,” Brown convinced the General
Assembly to pass a special war time tax to give him extra money to allot as he saw fit.12
The war time tax affirmed Brown’s status and commander and chief and fueled him
during the ongoing dispute with the Confederacy over “skeleton regiments.”13 As the war began
and President Davis began calling for troops from each state, the question of how to organize
these troops arose. The War Department wanted Brown to send troops formed as companies
without commanding officers, but Brown would only send full regiments. “The point was of
course,” claims Louise Biles Hill, “that if the men went as companies the President would
organize them into regiments and appoint the regimental officers; if as fully organized regiments,
the Governor would commission the officers.”14 The Davis administration felt that receiving
troops in companies were a necessity to forming a much larger army, but Brown saw it is a
dangerous encroachment of states’ rights. He saw the plea of necessity as merely the avenue for
the government to infringe its boundaries and evolve into a military led oligarchy. “This was the
plea set up for by the present Emperor of the French,” Brown angrily asserted in a letter to Maj.
J. H. Howard, “where by the control of the military he put his heels upon the constitution and
mounted the throne.” 15 To combat Brown, Congress authorized a law that would allow the
12
Joseph E. Brown, Henry Fielder, Ed, A Sketch of the Life and Times and Speeches of Joseph E. Brown.
Springfield, Mass: Press of Springfield.1883, 247.
13
Louise Biles Hill, Joseph E. Brown and the Confederacy, 51.
14
Louise Biles Hill, Joseph E. Brown and the Confederacy, 52.
15
Joseph E. Brown, Letter to Maj. J.H. Howard, 20 May 1861, Joseph E. Brown Papers, 716.
recruitment of troops to bypass state control and be under direct control of the War Department.
Governor Brown quickly subverted this act by issuing an order that refused to arm troops
recruited by the Confederate Government. In a letter to Jared I. Whitaker, Brown disclosed a
summation of his act:
So long as she [the state] has men and guns she will continue to arm and equip all that
she may be legally required to furnish and will do it as promptly as any other state in the
confederacy, but she will not arm or equip such companies as disregard her constituted
authorities and leaver her limits without consent of the state. In such case no attempt will be
made to stop the troops from leaving the state; but the state will refuse to arm them and will
leave them to look for arms to the government whose service they enter without consent of the
state.16
According to Joseph Parks, “Brown’s position was clear. He would arm only those troops
recruited under his supervision and officered by men commissioned by him.”17 The game of
political tic for tat between Brown and the Confederate government was on.
The conflict over troop organization was a mere skirmish compared to the warfare
between Brown and Davis over the Conscription Act. Davis and the Confederate Congress felt
that the power to enforce conscription was not only explicitly granted to them in the Confederate
constitution, but absolutely necessary to win the war. Brown felt otherwise. He saw conscription
as an unnecessary and unconstitutional ploy that enhanced Davis’s position from president to
military autocrat. He claimed that conscription “not only disorganizes the military system of all
the States, but consolidates almost the entire military of the States in the Confederate
Executive.”18 With the original conscription act drafting white men between the ages of eighteen
and thirty-five, the state would lose a large portion of both its state troops and vital personnel in
16
Joseph E. Brown, Letter to Jared I. Whitacker, Joseph E. Brown Papers, 688-689.
Joseph H. Parks, "State Rights in a Crisis: Governor Joseph E. Brown Versus President Jefferson Davis." Journal
of Southern History 32, no. 1: (1966) 3-24. America: History and Life with Full Text, 6.
18
Joseph E. Brown, A Sketch of the Life and Times and Speeches of Joseph E. Brown, 358.
17
charge of managing the state. In essence, the state would be gutted of its internal authority and
forced to demur to the whims of the Confederacy. In order to withhold some resemblance of
state power and managerial structure, Brown took a hard stance on conscription. “The act
[conscription] if carried out may take from the states more than half of either house of the
General Assembly and thus destroy one of the constitutional branches of the government,”
proclaimed Brown in a letter to H.V. Johnson, “The same may be to some extent true in the
reference to the judiciary. This I cannot and will not submit to, until submission is yielded to
superior overpowering force.”19
Much to Brown’s dismay, an overpowering force manifested in the form of a coalition of
state legislators and members of the state supreme court. After the act was passed, Brown
steadily urged other prominent members of the state to “abandon the odious conscription” and
refute the confederate government for treating free white men as slaves.20 While he was able to
incur an allied force that consisted of notable Georgians like Robert Toombs and Alexander
Stephens, other Georgians viewed Brown’s actions as inexcusable. At a time when Lee, Bragg,
and Van Dorn were in retreat, members of the General Assembly and Supreme Court, led by
Brown’s rival Benjamin Hill, sought to subvert Brown and enforce the law. In a joint committee
of the General Assembly that reeked of corruption, similar to the one that nominated Brown as
the Democratic candidate in 1857, the legislature moved to enforce conscription despite the
Governor’s pleas. Defeated, Brown was forced to concede certain aspects of conscription, but
his indirect obstruction and ostensible control of the state military continued throughout the war.
The Exemption Law of 1863 allowed the state to exempt the civil officers necessary to the
19
20
Joseph E. Brown, Letter to Herschel V. Johnson, 21 April 1862, Joseph E. Brown Papers, 993.
Joseph E. Brown, Letter to Hiram Warner, 18 Jan 1865, Joseph E. Brown Papers, 1420.
management of the state. Governor Brown was able to manipulate this law so that military
officers would be considered civil officials allowing them to be eligible for exemption. Once
exempted, the officer remained at their military post under Browns control. Even when
Confederate officials saw through this ploy, Brown’s obstinacy went so far as to command
militia officers to partake in standard military actions at various locations in the state to protect
them from enrolling officers.21
Aside from the potential dangers of conscription, Brown also disagreed with it on a
practical basis. In early 1862, manpower was not the most pressing obstacle facing the
Confederacy; arming and supplying the already existing army was a much more dire need.
According to the Governor, “The Conscription Act cannot aid the government in increasing its
supply of arms or provisions, but can only enable it to call a larger number of men into the field.
The difficulty has never been to get men. The States have already furnished the Government
more than it can arm, and have from their own means armed and equipped very large numbers
for it.”22 While unconstitutionally encroaching upon states’ rights would yield nefarious
predicaments for long term existence of the Confederacy, not focusing its resources on arming
and supplying the army would have an immediate impact on its physical prowess and collective
morale. Inversely, inflicting conscription upon an already burdened populace weakens the
patriotic fervor that drove recruits to enlist. Brown stated, “That Act [conscription] has already
so chilled the volunteer spirit of our people that it is not probable a volunteer regiment could now
be raised in any of the states while that act remains upon the statute book.”23 Brown’s resistance
on a practical basis furthers the enigma surrounding him by expressing his desire for Confederate
21
Louise Biles Hill, Joseph E. Brown and the Confederacy, 83.
Joseph E. Brown, Henry Fielder, Ed, A Sketch of the Life and Times and Speeches of Joseph E. Brown. 360.
23
Joseph E. Brown, Letter to Henry S. Foote, 11 Aug 1862, Joseph E. Brown Papers, 1036.
22
victory. Yet, despite his eagerness for success, he would not accept success derived from means
he deemed un-republican or unconstitutional.
The suspension of the writ of habeas corpus caused a second major assault on the
confederate government by Governor Brown. In 1862, Braxton Bragg declared martial law in
Atlanta and was met with stiff resistance by an allied force of Brown, Toombs, and both Linton
and Alexander Stephens. Davis, feeling the pressure from Brown and his allies, quickly
reprimanded Bragg and issued a temporary order against suspending the writ of habeas corpus.
However, when the temporary order ended in 1864, Davis suspended habeas corpus and enacted
martial law again just prior to the union army’s invasion of Georgia. Even in the midst of
invasion, Brown clung to his states’ rights ideology and belief that Davis was a despot. He
claimed, “Any effort on the part of Congress to do this is an attempt to revive the odious practice
of ordering political arrests, or issuing letter de cachet by royal prerogative.”24 Suspending the
writ of habeas corpus became the coupe de gras between Brown and the Davis Administration.
Brown and his allies took to the podium and the press to denounce the Confederate Government.
Behind the scenes, Brown and Alexander Stephens crafted peace plan with the north to
effectively undermine Davis and his government. While the peace plan did not work with the
precision Brown and Stephens had hoped due to its treasonous nature, it was still effective in
unraveling Confederate continuity. According to Hill, Brown and his conspirator’s opposition
“was so well organized and so ruthlessly directed as to lead many contemporaries and later
historians to question the loyalty of its leaders, if not openly to declare them as traitors.”25 This
24
25
Joseph E. Brown, Henry Fielder, Ed, A Sketch of the Life and Times and Speeches of Joseph E. Brown, 283
Louise Biles Hill, Joseph E. Brown and the Confederacy, 194.
organized dissident transformed Brown from a mere defiant governor to a leader of an open
revolt against the confederate government.
The motives behind Governor Brown’s transformation from an insolent governor to
insurgent evolved over the course of the war. At first, his intransigence was purely ideological.
Niven claims, “Joseph E. Brown was a local patriot who was unable to grasp the historical
implication of the whole Confederacy. He considered himself more of an ally of the
Confederacy, rather than an integral part of it.”26 Brown’s autonomy was a fundamental factor
that fueled his belief that he should act as a defender against “centralized machinery.”27 He used
his authority as governor to protect the people from benign encroachments of civil liberties by
the Confederate Government. As the Confederacy began to fracture from military defeats and
failure seemed more inevitable, Brown’s motivation for resistance shifted. He became enamored
with the belief that under Davis, Southerners would be “compelled to submit to a tyranny almost
as bad as, that of military despotism instead of republican government.”28 Hill states cynically,
“He was firmly convinced that the administration had destroyed civil liberty for all time. He saw
nothing, therefore, to be gained by Southern independence and nothing to be lost by
reestablishing the old Union.”29 Since nothing was to be gained from the Confederacy, the
quickest way to rejoin the Union and find favor from Lincoln was to discredit Davis by any
means necessary.
Unlike his amorphous motives, Joseph Brown’s legacy remains static. In the annals of
Civil War history, he continues to be the most prominent figure associated with Confederate
Alexander C. Niven, “Joseph E. Brown, Confederate Obstructionist,” 255.
Alexander C. Niven, “Joseph E. Brown, Confederate Obstructionist,” 255.
28
Joseph E. Brown, Letter to James Hillyer, 27 June 1862, Joseph E. Brown Papers, 1022.
29
Louise Biles Hill, Joseph E. Brown and the Confederacy, 250.
26
27
counter revolution. As a result, he constantly blamed for the Confederacy’s collapse. His desire
for control of Georgia in the face of President Davis has ascribed him the reputation of a
maniacal autocrat. Yet, in hindsight, a more accurate representation of Brown would be that of a
zealous patriot determined to protect states’ rights. To Brown, a policy in favor of states’ rights
was the best method of guarding against federal tyranny and protecting the rights of the common
man. Throughout his career he stood by his states’ rights ideology while knowing his actions
would be met with reproach. “Even in the midst of revolution I must be pardoned for standing by
our old states’ rights doctrines,” he pleaded in 1862, “if they are disregarded without complaint
in war they will not be respected in times of peace when the forces of precedent can be quoted to
sustain usurpation.”30 His willingness to risk his political reputation in favor of his own personal
doctrines must be commended. Even though this move has left him an enigmatic, if not
disgraceful legacy, Joseph Brown should always be remembered as an earnest champion of
republican principles.
30
Joseph E. Brown, Letter to John D. Stell, 28 July 1862, Joseph E. Brown Paper, 1029.
Works Cited
Brown, Joseph. Elijah Alexander Brown, Ed. Joseph E. Brown Papers. MS.95 Hargrett Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries.
Fielder, Herbert. A Sketch of the Life and Times and Speeches of Joseph E. Brown. Springfield,
Mass: Press of Springfield. 1883.
Hettle, Wallace T. "An Ambiguous Democrat: Joseph Brown and Georgia's Road to Secession."
The Georgia Historical Quarterly no. 3 (1997): 577-592. JSTOR Arts & Sciences VIII.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40583747?origin=JSTOR-pdf
Hill, Louise Biles. Joseph E. Brown and the Confederacy. Chapel Hill, University of North
Carolina Press, 1939.
Parks, Joseph H. 1966. "State Rights IN a Crisis: Governor Joseph E. Brown versus President
Jefferson Davis." Journal of Southern History 32, no. 1: (1966) 3-24. America: History
and Life with Full Text. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2204713?origin=JSTOR-pdf
Niven, Alexander C. 1958. "Joseph E. Brown, Confederate Obstructionist." Georgia Historical
Quarterly 42, no. 3: 233-257. America: History and Life with Full Text.