The Jasper Weekly Courier

protect or his friends in 50 (which is Union five to one,) and the political civilian leaders of Tennessee, saying if he (Brownlow) were kept twelve of their leaders would be sacrificed. His wife and children were detained hostages for his "good conduct." He told his wife to make up her mind to be executed, or he should certainly speak and write against the Confederacy. The worst men, he remarked, in the Southern Confederacy, are Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian and Episcopalian preachers. They drink and swear week days, and preach Sundays. When they became secesh they bid farewell to honesty, truth and decency. The Confederacy originated in lying, stealing and perjury. Floyd did the stealing, the common masses the lying, and fourteen Senators from the cotton States the perjury—the latter class while still retaining their seats in the United States Senate, and making a pretense of observing their oaths, but at night till twelve o'clock, holding secret meetings, sending dispatches to their respective States to pass ordinances of secession, to seize forts, &c. Among other instances illustrating the spirit prevailing among the Southern clergy, Mr. Brownlow said that the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Knoxville called a prayer meeting to pray that Burnside's fleet might sink and the blockade be raised. The same minister had said that he would rather use a Bible printed and bound in hell than one from the North. Also, that Jesus Christ was born on Southern soil, and that all his apostles were Southern men, except Judas Iscariot, who was a Northern man.— This was said openly, from his pulpit, on Sunday. Mr. Brownlow is of the opinion that there are better men in the place where the Presbyterian parson looked for his next edition of the Bible, than the Southern leaders— He had seen good men taken out of his prison in Knoxville, and one by one, and hung—fathers and sons. He was of opinion that it was time to hang on our side. Mr. Brownlow intimated his intention of going back to Knoxville to re-establish his paper, which he had edited for twenty-five years, and which had more subscribers than all the papers in Eastern Tennessee combined.