and place, and with an ignominious death daily threatened, maintains for weeks and months with unfaltering trust, his faith and virtue. The instinctive homage of the human heart to genuine courage we pay to an endurance like this. The historian who will record for the perusal of our children the list of heroes that this wicked rebellion has brought forth, will name none whose matchless courage is surpassed, or the bold outline of whose character for outspoken patriotism, so overshadows all cavil and criticism, as the hero of the pulpit and the press. I have now the honor of introducing Mr. W. G. Brownlow, of Knoxville, Tennessee.

SPEECH.

Ladies and Gentlemen:—I appear before you in accordance with the arrangement of a committee—a large committee—of intelligent and influential citizens of your own town. I am not before you for the purpose of making an effort as an orator, or a speaker, with any view or wish to fascinate or to charm my audience with the style or the language I employ in the brief address I am about to deliver.

I am before you for the purpose of relating facts and localities, and giving you names in regard to the rebellion in the South, and the persecutions of my fellow countrymen, and their sufferings even unto death. I have met, since I came to this city, with not a few intelligent and high-toned gentlemen—men of years and of knowledge—who have inquired of me seriously: "Is it a fact that they hanged men, shot down men, in your country, for their sentiments?" You cannot, it seems to me, realize the state of things that has existed beyond the mountains.

In what I shall say to you, without effort at all at display, I shall deal in nothing but facts. I will state nothing that I do not personally know to be true—nothing that I cannot sustain, if a controversy is raised in reference thereto.

I have seen the day when I was a young man, ladies (I speak of my age with a great deal of freedom, for I have a wife who is likely never to die)—[laughter]—I have seen the day when I could be heard by an audience of any size—when I have been able for four or five dreadful hours on a stretch to speak in the open air. Those days with me have gone by, and are numbered with the days and years beyond the flood. For some three years back I have labored under a disease of the throat—a bronchial affection—a severe affliction it was. Until the last twelve months I could but whisper. In the providence of God, and through his agency, I am better now. In repeated denunciation of secession my voice has been gaining all the time [applause,] and I shall not be astonished if in six months "Richard is himself again." [Applause.]

You will bear with me, I know, for I shall not detain you long. I shall by no means be tedious, but you will bear with me, I am certain, if I make a few remarks, by way of "preliminary," personal to myself. The circumstances surrounding me, the connection that my name has had for the last twelve months with the rebellion and with this subject, will justify me in so doing, without the dread of incurring the charge of egotism.

I am a native of the Old Dominion—born, raised and educated in the State of Virginia. I have the pleasure of announcing to you this evening that you have before you the first man who ever made the acknowledgment in public, that he was the descendant of one of the second families of Virginia. [Laughter.]

My parents before me, on both sides, were Virginians. On both sides of the house they were slaveholders, as most of the citizens of the Old Dominion are and have been. Although I am branded at home, since the inauguration of rebellion, with being myself an anti-slavery man, and a tory and the descendant of tories, I take great pleasure and pride in announcing to you that my father was a volunteer in the war of 1812, under Old Hickory. My uncle William, after whom I was named, lived and died a naval officer, and his remains sleep in the Navy Yard at Norfolk, Virginia. My uncle Alexander was also a naval officer, and his remains rest in the Navy Yard at New Orleans. My uncle John was also a navy officer. He died at sea and was thrown overboard, and became food for the fishes thereof. My uncle John was the third man who scaled the walls at the battle of the Horseshoe. [Applause.] On my mother's side—the Galloways—not a few lost their lives at Norfolk, from yellow fever, camp diseases and fatigue. They did not fight for a section of the country—not for the yellow fever swamps of the South—but for every State, and every particle of this glorious Union of ours. [Applause.]

I may as well make a remark or two on the subject of politics. I am not here for the purpose of reviving any old party prejudice—not at all—nor yet with a view to drop a solitary remark that shall offend even the most fastidious political partisan who may be under the sound of my voice. In Tennessee, thank God, we have merged all political party questions into the one great question of the Union and its preservation. [Applause.]

In all time to come—though I have been a Whig of the strictest sort—though I have lived up to the creed and fought Democracy in all its ramifications, and in all its windings—I would, in the language of Milton, see a man where cold performs the effect of fire—or, in the still more nervous language of Pollock, I would see a man where gravitation, shifting, turns the other way—even hell-ward—before I would vote for any man who was not an unconditional, straight-out Union man. [Great applause.]

I have fought Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, systematically, perseveringly and untiringly, for the last twenty-five years of my somewhat eventful life. He has scored me on every stump in the State of Tennessee, and I have paid him back to the best of my ability. But honors with us are easy. [Laughter.] We take each other by the hand now, as brethren. [Applause.] Now I will fight for him, and under him—engaged as we are in the same cause, against the same vile foe to God and man, and especially to our country. [Applause.]

I have always been a Union man. I commenced my political career in Tennessee in 1828. I remark again, ladies, that although I may have the appearance of being—I confess the fact with more candor from the consideration that I never expect to be—a widower [laughter], I commenced my political career in Tennessee in 1828. I was one of the corporal's guard who, in that State, got up the electoral ticket for John Quincy Adams against Andrew Jackson. I name this fact simply to show you that I was not a sectional man in '28; that I did not go for a man because he was born and lived south of Mason and Dixon's line, nor against him because he resided north of Mason and Dixon's line. Having mentioned the name of Old Hickory, I take pleasure in saying that, while I opposed him in his political aspirations, Jackson was always a patriot and a true lover of his country. If my prayers and tears could have brought him from his grave, during the last twelve months of the iniquitous reign of James Buchanan, I would have brought him out, that he might have destroyed secession as he did nullification—that might have sunk South Carolina in some sort of Lake not unlike the Dead Sea—where she will ultimately go. [Applause.]

In the next contest I was a supporter of Henry Clay. In the next contest I was a supporter of Ulasu White. In the next I supported William Henry Harrison, and I sung louder, jumped higher, and fell flatter and harder than anybody else in the whole