band in the wonderful power he possesses of endurance of protracted mental and physical labor and exertion.

It should be recorded to encourage the wives of all public men, that Mrs. Brown, in addition to the care of her children and household duties, with her own hand, copied for the printer the original manuscripts, difficult for most people to read, of all the messages and public documents of the Governor while in office. And in like manner all his discussions and opinions, as chief justice of the supreme court of Georgia; and in addition, with the aid of the lamented and life-long afflicted son, Franklin Pierce Brown, kept a complete file in scrap-books of the public criticisms and comments and commendations on the Governor, and most of the public documents from his early life to the present; which, since the destruction of public records and files by the Federal cavalry at Milledgeville, have greatly facilitated the writer in this work.

The student of biography may be curious to know by what kind of ladder he ascended from such lowly beginnings to so high a station and rank, and with such extraordinary rapidity. The answer to the inquiry is, a ladder he built as he ascended. It was based on the solid foundation of brain, backbone, and heart; mind, heroic endurance and irrepressible perseverance and energy, and honest purpose. The warmth of his patriotism, and sympathy with the masses of the people of all classes, and his fearless advocacy of the right, melted and moulded the material of its rounds, in rapid succession, by which he reached the height, and stood firmly planted on the foundation of self-sustaining ability and wisdom.

He was accustomed to attend courts, give unremitted attention to, and takes notes of all the proceedings on, legal questions. If he was counsel, he went in pre

pared on facts and law; if he was not counsel, in the case on trial, he was a laborious student of law in its application to the affairs of men, and therefore deeply interested in every cause that came to be tried by the courts He had neither disposition nor time to loiter and dissipate, or associate with the idle and vicious.

His first election to public office was in 1849, when nominated by the Democrats of the forty-first senatorial district, composed of Cobb and Cherokee counties; when, after encountering strong popular opposition on account of his temperance opinions and practices, and his stubborn. and persistent refusal to carry his election by buying whiskey and treating voters, he was elected by a large majority, and entered the senate under the administration of George W. Towns, amid a splendid array of legislative talent and worth. Towns had been re-elected over Hon. E. Y. Hill by a doubtful struggle, and the parties were closely matched, and nearly equally divided in the legislature. In the Senate, were Andrew J. Miller, Blount C. Ferrell, Peter E. Love, Allen E. Cochran, William W. Clayton, Thomas Purse, Richard H. Clark, William B. Wofford, John D. Stell, David J. Bailey, Charles Murphy, Edward D. Chisolm, James M. Spurlock. In the House were Linton Stephens, Lucius J. Gartrell, Edmund H. Worrell, William T. Wofford, John A. Jones, A. T. McIntyre, Charles J. Jenkins, Alexander McDugald, Robert P. Trippe, Randolph Spaulding, James N. Ramsey, Thomas C. Howard, John W. Anderson, George P. Harrison, A. D. Shackelford, A. H. Kenan, Winslow J. Lawton. There were others of merit in both Houses.

The State being in the rapid stage of development, her Legislature was a body of the first significance and importance; and summoned the best men of the respec

tive parties. The questions before this body were well calculated to draw out and utilize the wisdom of the elder, and develop the capacities of the younger members of the Houses, the men of mark and merit. It is a truth, however, that a large majority of this, as other preceding Legislatures, was of men not constituted by natural endowments or acquired abilities for the high and responsible duties of legislators. Young Brown was placed on three important standing committees of the Senate; among them the committee on the judiciary.

The questions of revenue, finance, and taxation, were prominent, and summoned the highest talent of both parties. There was a public debt of upwards of $1,800,000, which had been created in great part by the losses and the complications of the State through the State Central Bank, and the construction of the Western & Atlantic Railroad.

The theory of equalizing the burdens of government that were increasing with its enterprises, and consequent expenses, by the equitable system of ad valorem taxation, had been favored by Gov. Crawford. So far as relates to real estate, it was more strongly and forcibly urged by Gov Towns, on the general theory of placing all taxable property on the basis of paying taxes to support government according to value. The idea that the owner of a slave-child, or invalid, or of small value, should pay as much tax, on that slave, as the owner of a slave of large value, and a like theory as to other property, and assets, tended to bring the system of "specific taxes," into disfavor, and to inaugurate that of taxing values instead of specified property.

The Western & Atlantic railroad, the first enterprise of the kind by any Southern State, was being completed.

The subject of a suitable organization and system of laws for its government and management, so as to make it available as a great channel of inland transportation, and the development of the country, as was originally intended, and a source of revenue to the State after paying the debts contracted for construction, and at the same time guard against the corrupting influences of so large a money collecting and disbursing institution, was one of momentous importance.

The administration and government, and financial affairs of the State penitentiary; the asylums of the lunatics, and deaf and dumb; the public land system; the disputed boundary with Florida; the militia laws, and means of the protection of the State; the purity of elections; salaries of public officers; the supreme court; education, and the threatening relations of the people of the North toward the South on the slavery question, were under severe and critical review in this Legislature, and all afforded ample field for the intellectual powers of Mr. Brown and his able contemporaries of the Senate and House.

Gov. Towns, who was of the class called "hot spurs," and afterward "fire-eaters," brought the subject of federal relations before the Assembly, stating in strong terms his views of the dangers to the South growing out of anti-slavery aggressions by the Northern people. It was in this Legislature that the measure was adopted which divided the Democratic and Whig parties up to 1852. The call of a convention of the State to consider her course on account of the alleged fraudulent organization of the Territory of California into a State government, with a constitution prohibiting slavery, and the admission of the State into the Union by Congress: the

debates on this question and matters germane to it had the effect to develop different and conflicting opinions between Democrats and between Whigs in reference to the preservation of the Federal Union; and the integrity of the States and the protection to the constitutional rights of the South in the peculiar institution of slavery. They differed as to the value and importance of the Union, while all were Union men; they differed also as to the extent of the aggressive spirit against slavery and the imminence of the danger, while they were all State Rights and Southern Rights men. The result was an explosion and disbanding of party organizations for the time being. In these discussions, and those which followed before the people, Mr. Brown, while not a Disunionist or Secessionist, as many of the Southern Rights men were, was firmly and decidedly in favor of such a course as might tend to arrest aggression and preserve the Union and Constitution by providing safeguards, or enforcing those we had, for the rights of the States, and the honor and interest of the slaveholding people of the South.

But, as we have seen, the wing of Democracy with which he acted was largely in the minority when the people came to elect delegates to the convention, and in the subsequent election of Cobb over McDonald for governor, with a strong Union legislature which elected Mr. Toombs in the place of Mr. Berrien to the United States. Senate. But, as we have seen, upon the settlement of the disputed issues the local and temporary parties organized on them were disbanded, the old Whig and Democratic parties re-organized, and the Southern Rights Democrats passed out from under the cloud of defeat and minority.

In the organization of the Democratic forces of the