John Calvin Brown

The constitution Brown presided over in 1870 is still Tennessee's. It guaranteed the vote to men twenty-one and older of every race and also set up a poll tax. As governor he cut the bonded debt from $43 million to $20 million, though the state defaulted after the Panic of 1873, and his administration created school superintendents and separate schools for Black and white children. He had opposed secession in 1860, then fought for the Confederacy and was wounded at Perryville, Chickamauga and Franklin. In 1875 he lost a Senate seat to Andrew Johnson on the 54th ballot.

What the plaque says

John Calvin Brown Born in the same house as his brother, Neill, June 1, 1827. Enlisting for the Confederacy in 1861, he commanded a division at the war's end, having been twice wounded. Member 1869 Legislature and president, 1870 Constitutional Convention; elected Governor that year and again in 1872. Died Aug. 17, 1889; buried in Pulaski.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pulaski Public Square and the Giles County Courthouse — 9.6 mi
  The 1909 courthouse and nineteenth-century storefronts on Pulaski's square, in the town where the Ku Klux Klan was founded and where the architect Moses McKissack III was born.
• James D. Vaughan Southern Gospel Music Museum — 25 mi
  A museum on the third floor of the Vaughan Municipal Building on the Lawrenceburg square, honoring the shape-note publisher who built a songbook, quartet and radio empire here from 1903.
• David Crockett State Park — 27 mi
  A Lawrenceburg park on Shoal Creek where Davy Crockett ran a gristmill, a powder mill and a distillery from 1817, and later broke with Andrew Jackson over Indian removal.

More markers nearby

• Neill S. Brown — steps away
• Aaron Venable Brown — 1.8 mi
• Native Americans in Giles County — 9.3 mi
• Walter Herschel Beech — 9.5 mi