William Gannaway "Parson" Brownlow (1805-1877) was an influential East Tennessee minister, journalist, and governor. On the eve of the Civil War, his newspaper, popularly known as Brownlow's Whig, reached nearly eleven thousand subscribers across the nation. The Parson was a prominent spokesperson for the Whig Party and a staunch defender of the Union during the United States Civil War.

Born the son of yeoman farmers in 1805, William Brownlow was orphaned at the age of 11. In 1825, having tried his hand at farming and carpentry, he had a religious experience at a camp meeting and entered into a career as a circuit riding minister in the Holston Conference. After 10 years riding through the mountains preaching to all who would listen, Parson Brownlow married Eliza O'Brien and settled down to work for her father in the family iron mill at Elizabethton. Soon the former preacher, who had proved himself in the religious warfare carried on by Appalachia's Protestant churches a sharp man with a word, was approached by members of the local Whig Party to edit their failing newspaper, the Republican and Manufacturer's Record. Parson Brownlow accepted the offer and, as his biographer noted, found his greatest love after his wife, journalism. Operating on the advice he gave another editor in dealing with enemies (lather him with aqua fortis [nitric acid] and shave him with a handsaw), Parson Brownlow became, because of his wit, venom, and violent rhetoric, one the most noted (or notorious) journalists in American history. The Republican and Manufacturer's Record, after name changes and moves to Jonesboro and Knoxville, became the most famous newspaper in Tennessee under the name Brownlow's Whig.

With the coming of secession, Brownlow found himself a major force in the attempt to maintain the Union. With the Whig as his platform, Brownlow put all his effort and all his vituperative skills in the service of Unionism, but despite his efforts Tennessee joined the Confederacy. Losing the immediate argument with the secessionists did not silence him; Brownlow continued to use his paper to denounce the Confederacy and its leaders without restraint.

At last, exasperated by his abuse and facing in East Tennessee a rebellion generated by Brownlow's vitriolic words, the Confederate authorities in Knoxville arrested him and ultimately expelled him from the South. Exile did not end Brownlow's war with the Confederacy. Due to the publicity generated by his resistance and arrest in Tennessee, he found himself a hero to the North and used this new found fame as a weapon against the South. He lectured across the North, urging the reconquering of the seceding states. Those people he did not reach with the spoken word he reached with the printed word through the medium of his famous Parson Brownlow's Book, which recounted with vivid language and self-dramatization the story of his resistance in Knoxville to the Confederacy.

With the war's end Parson Brownlow and fellow East Tennessee Unionists formed a state government with Brownlow as governor. Publicly, as governor, his attitude was one of unremitting revenge upon the Confederates, though privately his attitude was charitable and forgiving toward individuals. Unfortunately for his reputation this attitude of revenge put him in opposition to the overwhelming majority of Tennesseeans, who were either former Confederates or Unionists who wished to forgive and forget. His reputation was also damaged by the fact that, while he was personally the most honest of men, many of his allies were not and took advantage of his frequent illnesses to raid the state coffers and engage in massive fraud and corruption. Despite these scandals, Brownlow was elected to the Senate in 1868. Due to his extreme weakness (born of years of illness) he made little mark.

After his service in the Senate, Brownlow returned to East Tennessee, where, unlike in the rest of the state, he remained popular. People had been expecting him to die while governor and senator because of his illnesses, but, almost through strength of will alone, Brownlow lived on, only to at last die in the spring of 1877.