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"The Howard-Smith Collection"

Transcription copyright: 1998, by Mrs. F. A. Augsbury; all rights reserved.
The originals are at the McClung Library in Knoxville.

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To: Fanny McKinney
From: John B. Brownlow, 1411 Corcoran St., Washington, D. C.
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                                                      1411 Corcoran St.,
                                                      Washington, D.C.
                                                      Feb. 20, 1893.

 Cousin Fanny:
    I have just become possessed of the proceedings of the Constitutional
Convention of Tenn. of 1834-5 with the exception of the first sixteen pages
which are missing.  If I had the loan of a perfect copy of that book, of
about 400 pages, I would have the missing 16 pages type-written and have
my book re-bound inserting these pages.  As the name of your grandfather
figures most prominently and honorably in that important document it
occurred to me you might have the book, and if so I would like to borrow
it from you so as to copy these 16 pages.  Foreseeing the evil consequences
to come upon the Southern people from slavery, and also foreseeing
inevitable destruction, John A. McKinney, of Hawkins, ably and earnestly
urged upon the Convention that it then (1834-5) take immediate steps for
the gradual emancipation of the slaves so that by the year 1865 they would
all be free and in the gradual emancipation the white people would not feel
the loss and their labor system be deranged as would be the case by a
sudden and total loss of slave property.  In a word, John A. McKinney's
course in that convention was the conduct of a statesman.  The difference
between a politician and a statesman is that the former lives only for
today and can only see what is under his nose, while the statesman lives
for posterity and can see into the future.  Robert J. McKinney, of Greene
took just the reverse course in the aforesaid Convention, all of which
proved that John A. McKinney was a far abler man than Robert J. even if
the latter was Judge of the Supreme Court.  A new history of Tenn. is
being prepared here by a competent man and your grand-father will have
a prominent & honorable place in it.  In his oration on the death of
President Lincoln, delivered by request of Congress, the great historian
Bancroft says that Thomas Jefferson and your grand-uncle Edmund Pendleton
were the greatest men and statesman Va. ever had, and in proof of it cites
the fact that they foresaw the trouble to come upon the country from the
negro question and they both earnestly strove to have the importation of
African slaves prohibited at the beginning of the Revolutionary struggle.
If their advice had been followed there would have been so few negroes in
the country there would never have been secession and war and there would
now be no race problem in the South to vex the people.  I also see that
20 years before the late war began Gen. Gaines wrote a letter advocating
the same policy which your grandfather did in 1834.  You will see from all
this that the able men of your ancestors, on both sides of the house,
pursued a course which vindicated that pursued by your father during the
war and after.

    If you have that book and will send it to me by Express. C.O.D. I
promise you to take good care of it and return it to you in as good
condition as it is when you send it.  In the new Enyclopaedia of
American Biography is an engraving of Pendleton and a sketch of his
life with a quotation from Jefferson to the effect that he "was the
ablest debater he had ever seen."  In a letter of Henry Clay on the
great men and lawyers of Virginia, written a year before he died,
Mr. Clay said that Pendleton was far ahead of them all.  And the
historians all agree that he was as honest as he was able.

    As this is the first letter I ever wrote you I ought not to have
made it so long, but I have the defect in writing that I have in
talking-when I get started it is hard for me to stop.

    With best wishes,
        Jno. B. Brownlow

P.S.
    The boarding houses and hotels of Washington are being filled with
our Democratic brethren who are after offices (with a salary attachment)
as soon as Grover, Francis and baby Ruth are installed in the White House.
A Kentuckian applied to Congressman Caruth of that State, the day after
the election last Nov., for an office under Cleveland.  Said the
Congressman: "are you not rather premature in your application, ain't
this a little early." Yes!" said the fellow "I am early, but I am
reminded it is the early bird which catches the worm, and you and
I know there are a darned sight more birds than worms."