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In 1865, the Methodist Rev. William G. Brownlow of Knoxville became
the carpet bagger Governor of Tennessee as head of the minority
Radical Unionists. He immediately started a second civil war against
returning Confederates. Earlier as editor of Brownlow’s
Knoxville Whig, he was pro-southern and pro-slavery. He became
a fanatical Unionist and was expelled to the North.
He (Brownlow) encourages the people, wrote a diarist in late 1864,
to kill their rebel neighbors wherever they find them, to do it
without noise, secretly, but do it, and bury them in the woods
like brutes.
Brownlow's speeches so much pleased the Republicans that they
invited him to go about repeating similar speeches to stir up the
old soldiers to the fury of a second war on the South.
"If I had the power," Parson Brownlow said, " I
would arm and uniform in the Federal habiliments every wolf and
panther and catamount and tiger and bear in the mountains of America;
every crocodile in the swamps of Florida and South Carolina; every
negro in the Southern Confederacy, and every devil in hell, and
turn them on the rebels in the South, if it exterminated every
rebel from the face of God's green earth ...Every man, woman and
child south of the Mason Dixon line. I would like to see Richmond
and Charleston captured by negro troops commanded by Butler the
Beast. We will crowd the rebels into the Gulf of Mexico, and drown
the entire race, as the devil rid the hogs in the Sea of Galilee.
(Long and loud applause)
"I am one of those who believes the war has ended too soon.
We have whipped the rebels but not enough.....The second army of
invasion will, as they ought to, make the entire South as God found
the earth, without form and void. They will not, and ought not
to, leave one rebel fence-rail, out house, one dwelling, in the
eleven seceded states. As for the Rebel population, let them be
exterminated. When the second war is wound up, which should be
done with swift destruction, let the land be surveyed and sold
out to pay expenses.
"Let [the first army] them be the largest division, and do
the killing. Let the second division be armed with pine torches
and spirits of turpentine and, and let them do the burning! Let
the third and last division be armed with surveyors' compasses
and chains, that will survey the land and settle it with loyal
people.
"....'burn and kill! Burn and kill!" until the whole
rebel race is exterminated."
......Parson Brownlow, at the post war convention in Philadelphia,
1866.
Governor Yates of Illinois...."Illinois raised 250,000 troops
to fight the South, and now we are ready to raise 500,000 more
to finish the good work."
Carpetbagger Texas Governor Hamilton...at the
same Philadelphia 2nd War convention..."Prepare your hearts,
and your guns, and your swords, for another conflict. It is bound
to come. Get yourselves ready." "We are ready," shouted
back a blood thirsty Republican. "We are ready! We'll march
down and finish the Rebs!"
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