The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12Brann, William Cowper
History
The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
Brann's good work will live, his fame will survive and an
intellectual race yet will rise up and bless his name when
the lying epitaphs of the assassin sent to the d---- by him
shall have crumbled to earth ten thousand years. We cannot
close this faint tribute of respect to our dead friend
without acknowledging the worth of such true men as Mr.
W. H. Ward and Judge G. B. Gerald, both of whom are
able, brave, high-toned gentlemen, and both of whom came
near dying, and both were willing to die, or see that Mr.
Brann got fair play while he lived.--S. M. Scruggs, in
the Tribune.
* * *
BRANN IS NO MORE.
On the first of April--All Fools' Day--W. C. Brann,
of the ICONOCLAST, and T. M. Davis riddled each other
with bullets in Waco, Texas. Both of them died the
following day. The trouble between them grew out of the
attack made by Brann in his paper on the Baylor University,
a Baptist institution attended by the daughter of Davis.
At the time that Brann accused the students of the
college of immorality, he was assaulted by them, and barely
escaped lynching at their hands. He was forced to make
a retraction and was ordered to leave town. Being a
courageous man Brann refused to emigrate.
The Irish Standard chronicles the untimely and awful
death of Mr. Brann with poignant regret, and tenders its
condolence to his afflicted family. In many ways he won
the admiration of the American people. He was a man
of great mental endowments, and in the use of invective,
often degenerating into billingsgate, he stood without a
rival in American journalism. His mind was broad and
he despised religious intolerance. As an American he
loved the stars and stripes and was opposed to an Anglo-
American alliance. He held hypocrites in supreme
contempt and lashed the pharisees unmercifully. When
Catholic priests and sisters were misrepresented by
sectarian bigots, he used his tongue and pen in their defense.
So ably did he vindicate the Catholic church from their
aspersions that many supposed him to be a Jesuit in
disguise. In the last issue of the ICONOCLAST he told a
correspondent what he thought of Mrs. Shepard and ex-
priest Chiniquy. Had Brann lived in a more civilized
community than among the bigoted Baptists of Texas, he
would have used more elegant language in his magazine
than it contained for the past few months.
We entirely disagree with the Pioneer Press in its
characterization of the deceased journalist when it says:
"From attacking the private lives of the prominent and
successful men of every quarter of the union and
levying blackmail as the price of silence from those whose
slips or frailties his keen hyena-like appetite for filth
had enabled him to scent, it was an easy step to the most
scurrilous assaults on men and women whose only offending
lay in their uprightness and virtue."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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