John Young Brown (June 28, 1835January 11, 1904) was an American politician from the U.S. Commonwealth of Kentucky who represented the state in the United States House of Representatives and served as its 31st governor of Kentucky. Brown was elected to the House of Representatives for three non-consecutive terms, each of which was marred by controversy. He was first elected in 1859, despite his own protests that he was not yet twenty-five years old, the minimum age set by the Constitution for serving in the legislature. The voters of his district elected him anyway, but he was not allowed to take his seat until the Congress' second session, after he was of legal age to serve. After moving to Henderson, Kentucky, Brown was elected from that district in 1866. On this occasion, he was denied his seat because of alleged disloyalty to the Union during the Civil War. Voters in his district refused to elect another representative, and the seat remained vacant throughout the term to which Brown was elected. After an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 1871, Brown was again elected to the House in 1872 and served three consecutive terms. During his final term, he was officially censured for delivering a speech excoriating Massachusetts Representative Benjamin F. Butler. The censure was later expunged from the congressional record.
After his service in the House, Brown took a break from politics but re-entered the political arena as a candidate for governor of Kentucky in 1891. He secured the Democratic nomination in a four-way primary election, then convincingly won the general election over his Republican challenger, Andrew T. Wood. Brown's administration, and the state Democratic Party, were split between gold standard supporters (including Brown) and supporters of the free coinage of silver. Brown's was also the first administration to operate under the Kentucky Constitution of 1891, and most of the legislature's time was spent adapting the state's code of laws to the new constitution. Consequently, little of significance was accomplished during Brown's term.
Brown hoped the legislature would elect him to the U.S. Senate following his term as governor. Having already alienated the free silver faction of his party, he backed "Goldbug" candidate Cassius M. Clay Jr. for the Democratic nomination in the upcoming gubernatorial election. However, the deaths of two of Brown's children ended his interest in the gubernatorial race and his own senatorial ambitions. At the Democratic nominating convention of 1899, candidate William Goebel used questionable tactics to secure the gubernatorial nomination, and a disgruntled faction of the party held a separate nominating convention, choosing Brown to oppose Goebel in the general election. Goebel was eventually declared the winner of the election, but was assassinated. Brown became the legal counsel for former Kentucky Secretary of State Caleb Powers, an accused conspirator in the assassination. Brown died in Henderson on January 11, 1904.
Early life John Young Brown was born on June 27, 1835, in Claysville (near Elizabethtown), Hardin County, Kentucky.Harrison in The Kentucky Encyclopedia, pp. 129–130 He was the son of Thomas Dudley and Elizabeth (Young) Brown. His father served in the state legislature and was a delegate to the 1849 state constitutional convention.Ireland, p. 123 Two of his uncles, Bryan Rust Young and William Singleton Young, served as U.S. Representatives."Brown, John Young". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Brown spent much time with his father at the state capitol, which sparked his early interest in politics.Levin, p. 212
Brown received his early education in the schools of Elizabethtown, and in 1851, at the age of sixteen, matriculated at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.Tapp and Klotter, p. 463 In 1855, he graduated from Centre and returned to Hardin County to read law. He was admitted to the bar in 1857 and opened his practice in Elizabethtown. His reputation as an orator put him in high demand, but his zealous criticism of the Know Nothing Party drew threats against his life.Powell, p. 70
Brown married Lucie Barbee in 1857, but she died the following year. In September 1860, he married Rebecca Hart Dixon, the daughter of former U.S. Senator Archibald Dixon. The couple had eight children.
U.S. House of Representatives At a meeting of local Democrats in Bardstown, Kentucky, in 1859, Brown was nominated to oppose Joshua Jewett for Jewett's seat in the House of Representatives. Despite Brown's protests that he was more than a year younger than the legal age to serve, he was elected over Jewett by about two thousand votes. He did not take his seat until the second congressional session because of his age. He became a member of the Douglas National Committee in 1860 and engaged in a series of debates with supporters of John C. Breckinridge for president, including Breckinridge's cousin, William Campbell Preston Breckinridge.
It is not clear exactly when Brown relocated to Henderson, Kentucky. Confederate officer Stovepipe Johnson recounts that Brown was among the city leaders who welcomed him to Henderson in early 1862, but other sources state that Brown did not settle in Henderson until after the war.Johnson, p. 102 His sympathies during the war were decidedly with the Confederacy.
Brown was re-elected to the House of Representatives in 1866. His seat was declared vacant, however, because of his alleged disloyalty during the war. Voters in his district refused to elect anyone else to fill the vacancy, and Governor John W. Stevenson filed an official protest of the House's action, but the seat remained unfilled throughout the Fortieth Congress.
Governor Stevenson resigned his office to accept a seat in the U.S. Senate, and the remainder of his term was filled by President Pro Tem of the Senate Preston Leslie. When Leslie, who enjoyed only lukewarm support from his party, sought the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1871, Brown's name was among those put in nomination against his; after a few ballots, however, it became clear that Brown would not be able to gain a majority, and his supporters abandoned their support of him in favor of other candidates.Tapp and Klotter, p. 37 The following year, Brown was re-elected to the House of Representatives by an overwhelming vote of 10,888 to 457 and was allowed to assume his seat. He was twice re-elected, serving until 1877.
Brown's most notable action in the House was a speech he made on February 4, 1875, in response to Massachusetts Representative Benjamin F. Butler's call to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Referring to comments Butler had made the previous day about lawlessness against African-Americans in the South, Brown claimed that unjust charges had been made against Southerners by an individual "who is outlawed in his own home by respectable society, whose name is synonymous with falsehood, who is the champion, and has been on all occasions, of fraud; who is the apologist of thieves, who is such a prodigy of vice and meanness that to describe him would sicken the imagination and exhaust invective."Trefousse, p. 8 Brown continued by referencing notorious Scottish murderer William Burke, whose method of murdering his victims became known as "Burking."Trefousse, p. 9 At this point in the speech, Speaker of the House James G. Blaine interrupted Brown, asking if he was referring to a member of the House; Brown gave an ambiguous response before continuing: "If I wished to describe all that was pusillanimous in war, inhuman in peace, forbidden in morals, and infamous in politics, I should call it 'Butlerizing'." The House gallery exploded in protest at Brown's remark, and incensed Republican legislators called for Brown's immediate expulsion. Though not expelled, he was officially censured by the House for the use of unparliamentary language. The censure was expunged from the record by a subsequent Congress.
1891 gubernatorial election
Following his service in the House, Brown resumed his law practice in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1891, he was a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.Harrison in A New History of Kentucky, p. 266 The other candidates included Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., son of former Congressman Brutus J. Clay and nephew of abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay; Dr. John Daniel Clardy, later to be elected a U.S. Representative; and Attorney General Parker Watkins Hardin. The party was split between supporters of corporations, such as the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, and supporters of agrarian interests. Another split was between the more conservative Bourbon Democrats, who supported maintaining the gold standard, and more progressive Democrats, who called for the free coinage of silver.Tapp and Klotter, p. 317 Agrarian voters were about equally split between Clay and Clardy, while Free Silver Democrats were about equally split between Hardin and Clardy. Having lived in the agrarian western part of the state for most of his life, and never having alienated the powerful Farmers' Alliance, Brown was acceptable to most agrarian interests, while the Louisville and Nashville Railroad felt he was a moderate on the issue of corporate regulation.Ireland, p. 124 Bourbon Democrats were also pleased with his sound money stand.
Entering the Democratic nominating convention, Brown seemed to be the favorite for the nomination. On the first ballot, he garnered the most votes (275), leading Clay (264), Clardy (190), and Hardin (186). Over the next nine ballots, the vote counts changed little. Finally, the convention chairman announced that the candidate receiving the fewest votes on the next ballot would be dropped from the voting. Clardy received the fewest votes, and on the next ballot, his supporters divided almost equally between the remaining three candidates. Hardin was the next candidate to be dropped, and Brown received a majority over Clay on the thirteenth ballot.
The Republicans nominated Andrew T. Wood, a lawyer from Mount Sterling, who had failed in earlier elections for Congress and state attorney general. Concurrently with the gubernatorial election, the state's voters would decide whether to ratify a proposed new constitution for the state in 1891. The divided Democrats had taken no stand on the document as part of their convention's platform, and Wood spent much of the campaign trying to get Brown to declare his support for or opposition to it. About six weeks before the election, Brown, sensing strong public support for the new constitution, finally came out in favor of it. For the remainder of the race, Wood touted an alleged conspiracy between Brown and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad to thwart meaningful corporate regulations, but the issue failed to gain much traction.
Both Democrats and Republicans were concerned about the presence of S. Brewer Erwin, nominee of the newly formed Populist Party, in the race; he enjoyed strong support for a third-party candidate, despite the fact that many believed his party's platform was too radical. Democrats, who were used to carrying the agrarian vote by a wide margin, were especially concerned that the Farmers' Alliance, consisting of over 125,000 members in Kentucky, would endorse Erwin. This did not occur, however, and in the general election, Brown defeated Wood by a vote of 144,168 to 116,087. Though he won the election, Brown had not won a majority of the votes; Populist Erwin captured 25,631 votes – 9 percent of the total cast – and a Prohibition candidate received 3,292 votes.
Governor of Kentucky