Joseph Emerson Brown (April 15, 1821 – November 30, 1894), often referred to as Joe Brown, was an attorney and politician, serving as the 42nd Governor of Georgia from 1857 to 1865, the only governor to serve four terms. After the American Civil War, he was elected by the state legislature as a two-term U.S. Senator, serving from 1880 to 1891. Brown was a leading secessionist in 1861, and led his state into the Confederacy.
A former Whig, and a firm believer in slavery and Southern states’ rights, he 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. He denounced Confederate President Jefferson Davis as an incipient tyrant, and challenged 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 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 earned high profits from two decades of using mostly black 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, all based on the use of convict labor. By 1889 it was known as the Georgia Mining, Manufacturing and Investment Company. Brown and his wife, Elizabeth Grisham Brown, were honored in 1928 by a statue installed on the state capitol grounds.
He saved The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary financially in the 1870s.[1] There is now an endowed chair, the Joseph Emerson Brown Chair of Christian Theology at the institution.[2]
During the War
Once the Confederacy was established,[12] Brown, a states’ rights advocate, spoke out against expansion of the Confederate central government’s powers. He denounced President Jefferson Davis in particular. Brown tried to stop Colonel Francis Bartow from taking Georgia troops out of the state to the First Battle of Bull Run. Though he objected most strenuously to military conscription by the Confederate government in Richmond, Brown also protested the army’s impressment of goods and slave labor and was critical of Confederate tax and blockade-running policies. In time, other Confederate governors followed Brown’s example, undermining the war effort and sapping the Confederacy of vital resources.[13][14][15][16][17]
The capture of Milledgeville
After the fall of Atlanta, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman began his March to the Sea. On the route from Atlanta to Savannah the left wing of Sherman’s army entered the city of Milledgeville, then Georgia’s state capital. As U.S. troops closed in on the city, and with the fall of the capital imminent, Governor Brown ordered Quartermaster General Ira Roe Foster to remove the state records. The task proved to be difficult, as it was undertaken in the midst of chaos.
After the loss of Atlanta, Brown withdrew the state’s militia from the Confederate forces to harvest crops for the state and the army.[19] When Union troops under Sherman overran much of Georgia in 1864, Brown called for an end to the war.
Post-war imprisonment to Republican judgeship
After the war, Brown was briefly held as a political prisoner in Washington, D.C. He supported President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction policies, joining the Republican Party for a time.
As a Republican, Brown was appointed as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia, serving from 1865 to 1870.
Content retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_E._Brown.
