Confederate governor of Georgia during the American Civil War.

Brown grew up in the mountainous region of northern Georgia. His political career began in 1849, when, after having established himself as a lawyer in Canton, Ga., he was elected to the state senate as a Democrat. In 1855 he became a circuit judge and then was elected to four consecutive two-year terms as governor of Georgia (1857–65). Up to and during the American Civil War he was ardently for slavery and states rights.

At the end of the war, Brown was imprisoned briefly before President Andrew Johnson pardoned him. He then angered his Georgia constituents by counseling cooperation with the congressional plan for Reconstruction. He was declared a renegade from Southern principles, a belief he reinforced when he switched to the Republican Party and assisted in the implementation of Radical Reconstruction. In 1868 Brown suffered the single electoral loss in his political career when he was defeated for a U.S. Senate seat. Later that same year, he was appointed chief justice of Georgia's Supreme Court. In 1870 he resigned from the court to become president of the Western and Atlantic Company, which operated the state-owned railroad. Through this position and shrewd investments in Atlanta real estate, Brown acquired great wealth. He served in the U.S. Senate from 1881 to 1891.