John Calvin Brown (January 6, 1827August 17, 1889) was a Confederate Army officer and an American politician and businessman. Although he originally opposed secession, Brown fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War, eventually rising to the rank of major general. He later served as the 19th governor of Tennessee from 1871 to 1875, and was president of the state's 1870 constitutional convention, which wrote the current Tennessee State Constitution.
A leader of the state's Bourbon Democrats, Brown dedicated much of his time as governor to solving the state's mounting debt issues. Following his gubernatorial tenure, he advocated railroad construction, briefly serving as president of the Texas & Pacific Railroad in 1888, and as president of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company in 1889. John graduated from Jackson College in Columbia, Tennessee, in 1846. He studied law with his uncle, Hugh Brown, in Spring Hill, and was admitted to the bar in 1848. He began practicing law in Pulaski that same year.
Like his brother, Brown was a Whig prior to the American Civil War, and following the Whig Party's collapse in the mid-1850s, he continued to support former Whig candidates.
American Civil War
In May 1861, Brown enlisted as a private in the Confederate infantry, and was elected colonel of the 3rd Tennessee Infantry shortly afterward.
Brown's most pressing issue was the state's skyrocketing debt. In previous decades, Tennessee had accumulated $43 million in bonded debt, mostly to pay for internal improvements, such as turnpike construction and loans to railroads. Governor William Brownlow exacerbated the problem by issuing more bonds to pay the interest on outstanding bonds in the late 1860s.
Brown fell ill in the Summer of 1889, and traveled to Red Boiling Springs, a mineral springs resort in north-central Tennessee, in hopes of recovering. On August 17, 1889, however, he suffered a stomach hemorrhage and died.
Personal life
Brown's first wife, Anne Pointer, died in 1858. They had four children: Marie, Daisy, Elizabeth, and John C. Brown, Jr. Brown's wife, Elizabeth, was among the women featured in Annie Somers Gilchrist's 1902 book, Some Representative Women of Tennessee. The Browns' daughter, Marie, was married to Governor Benton McMillin.