“’Fare well to all Radicals’: The Downfall of William Brownlow’s Radical Regime”
A Lecture by William E. Hardy
Noon, Wednesday, April 10, 2013
LOCATION: East Tennessee History Center 601 South Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902
ADMISSION: FREE | Attendees are encouraged to bring a “brown bag” lunch
On February 10, 1869, William “Parson” Brownlow tendered his resignation as governor of Tennessee to take his seat in the United States Senate. On resigning, Brownlow expressed full confidence in DeWitt C. Senter, the man who would succeed him. Stunningly, however, within six months, Brownlow’s rivals won the Tennessee General Assembly, and his Radical regime verged on collapse. The Radicals’ desperate pleas to congress and to President Ulysses S. Grant for federal intervention fell on deaf ears, and the former Confederates crushed Brownlow’s party in the 1870 state election. William E. Hardy will discuss Brownlow’s policies, such as the disenfranchisement of former Confederates and the enfranchisement of freed slaves, which led to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and eventually to the end of Tennessee’s Radical Reconstruction era.
William E. Hardy is a doctoral student in history at the University of Tennessee, and academic coordinator for the East Tennessee Historical Society’s Teaching American History Grant.
The program is sponsored by the Harriet Z. Albers Memorial Fund, and free and open to the public. The lecture will begin at noon at the East Tennessee History Center, 601 S. Gay Street, Knoxville. Guests are invited to bring a “Brown Bag” lunch and enjoy the lecture. Soft drinks will be available. For more information on the lecture, exhibitions, or museum hours, call 865-215-8824 or visit the website at www.EastTNHistory.org.
