Thereupon the District Attorney entered a _nolle-prosequi_ in the case, and Commissioner Reynolds ordered the prisoner’s discharge. He was instantly arrested by the military authorities, and a guard of soldiers placed around his house day and night. For the greater part of January and February his bodily illness continued, partly owing no doubt to mental anxiety and troubles in the midst of enemies, some of whom cordially hated and annoyed him. From the threatenings that surrounded him, the apprehensions they naturally awakened, and the vexations of his life in custody, he was delivered by the obedience of Major Monserrat to an order by telegraph from the Richmond Secretary of War, authorizing him “to send Brownlow out of Tennessee.” On the third of March, the irrepressible friend of the Union departed on his journey for another and, certainly for him a better country, than that in which he sojourned and where he had with singular determination and zeal waged an angry contest against odds. Defeated at home, he left it with strong hope of the coming time when the cause which he had deeply at heart should be there victorious and he among the victors. His departure at the time, and in the manner adopted, could not do otherwise than afford a sense of relief not only to him and his friends, but also to many of his enemies. In this latter class were some who would have been gratified had he been sent to jail at Tuscaloosa or even to the gallows, for their passions against him as the persistent “very head and front” of offence to them, were kindled to white heat. And the _Register_ of the town expressed their mind, in declaring the action of the Secretary of War as “worse than a crime--a blunder,” and that the authorities had “been outwitted and over-reached diplomatically” by giving a “pledge to convey Brownlow within the Hessian lines.” Besides, they feared that the results to the Confederate supremacy in East Tennessee of his influence and work north of the State, would be as that journal predicted, disastrous. It was with delays and difficulties he reached Nashville; but after a journey of two hundred miles, requiring twelve days, on the fifteenth of March he was delivered by his military Confederate escort within the Federal lines at that city. There he was heartily welcomed. Among those who greeted him were his former East Tennessee compatriots, Andrew Johnson, then Military Governor of the State, Horace Maynard and Connelly F. Trigg. They and he were glad to meet again on soil of the United States where, under its protection, they were free.