people applauded; while Brown said hundreds of things that the people
remembered, and carried home with them, and thought over. Joe Brown was
not only a man of the people, but a man of the country people; and
he pleased the city people who had formerly lived in the country. The
result of the campaign was that Know-nothingism was buried out of sight
in Georgia. Joe Brown was elected by more than ten thousand majority,
and the Democratic majority in the Legislature was overwhelming.
Although he was only thirty-six years old when he became governor, the
people began to call him "Old Judg_ment_." This was due no less to his
peculiar gift of hard common sense than to his peculiar pronunciation.
His speech and his ways were "countrified," and they remained so all
the days of his life. His voice was not musical, and he had a peculiar
drawling intonation, which, if it had been a little more nasal, would
have been an exact reproduction of the tone and manner of the Down-east
Yankee. He shared these peculiarities with hundreds of the descendants
of the Puritans who settled in the mountains of East Tennessee and North
Georgia. He had no wish for the luxuries of life; and though he lived
comfortably, he never, even when by close economy he had accumulated one
of the largest fortunes in Georgia, cared to live finely. He was a plain
man at first and a plain man at last, always temperate, industrious, and
economical.
His term of office in the governor's chair was for two years, and at
the end of that time he had almost entirely remolded and refashioned his
party. He had stamped his own personality and character upon it, and it
became in truth and in fact the party of the people,--the common people.
In his management of State affairs he had introduced the plain business
methods suggested by common sense; he dispensed with all unnecessary
officials; he shook off all the hangers-on; he uprooted all personal
schemes: so that when the time came to nominate a man to succeed him, it
was found that the people had no other choice. His party thought of no
other name.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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