Parson Brownlow

In his address at Cincinnati the Parson thus describes the narrow escape he made from being hung, and the fearlessness of one of his companions:

I expected to be hung, and had made up my mind to it.  I was told that the drumhead court-martial lacked but one vote of confirming my doom, and that was the vote of a Secessionist.  No man ever came so near being hung and was not.  One of my companions, A. C. Hawn – the gallant Hawn, one of the most moral and upright men in Knoxville, with a wife and two small children – was sentenced to be hung by this court-martial, and he had but one hour’s notice to prepare himself.  He asked for a minister of one of the churches in Knoxville to be sent for, but the reply of the jailor was, “no d----d traitor in the South has the right to be prayed for, and God does not hear such prayers.”  Poor Hawn was placed on the scaffold, and a miserable drunken chaplain of one of the Southern regiments was sent to attend him.

Just as they were about to launch Hawn into eternity the chaplain said: “This poor unfortunate man desires to say that he was led into committing the acts for which he is now to atone with his life, by the Union men, and he is really an object of pity.”

Hawn rose, and in stentorian voice replied, “I desire to say that every word that man has said is false.  I am the identical man that put the torch to the timbers of that bridge, and I am ready to swing for it.  Hang me as soon as you can.”  He said he would do it again if he knew this was to be his fate for it.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, April 4, 1862, p. 2