William G. Brownlow: Fighting Parson of the Southern Highlands

Tennessee has had its share of outrageous characters over the years but none more so than William G. Brownlow. A legend in his own time and mythic in times after, Parson Brownlow was a circuit-riding Methodist minister, upstart journalist, and political activist who wielded a vitriolic tongue and pen in defense of both slavery and the Union.

E. Merton Coulter's 1937 biography of Brownlow remains the standard account of the parson and his times. It traces his religious, journalistic, and polit…