Henry Emerson Etheridge (September 28, 1819 – October 21, 1902) was an American politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives for Tennessee's 9th congressional district from 1853 to 1857, and again from 1859 to 1861.

[2] In the early 1830s, he moved with his parents to Weakley County, Tennessee, where they settled on a 1,000-acre (400 ha) farm near the community of Sharon.

[7] Etheridge sought the open seat, and running virtually unopposed, was easily elected to the Thirty-third Congress in 1853.

[8] Etheridge entered Congress at a time of growing sectional tension between the North and South over the issue of slavery.

[9] In February 1857, Etheridge spoke in opposition to the reopening of the African slave trade, calling any such proposition "shocking to the moral sentiment of the enlightened portion of mankind.

[2] After the Union Army regained control of Nashville in early 1862, Etheridge returned to the city and spoke before a crowd of 1,200.

[2] In December 1863, he joined an unsuccessful plot to give Democrats and Southern Unionists control of the House, using his position as Clerk to try and invalidate the credentials of Republican congressmen.

[2] By June 1865, Etheridge was the most vocal critic of William "Parson" Brownlow, an ardent anti-secessionist who had been elected governor after Johnson became vice president earlier that year.

[2] Etheridge considered several measures passed by Brownlow and his supporters in the state legislature tyrannical, especially attempts to deny ex-Confederates the right to vote.

Etheridge campaigned for reelection to Congress in 1865, but so strong was his criticism of Brownlow and Lincoln that he was arrested by military authorities for "attempting to incite the people of Tennessee to reinaugurate revolution and bloodshed" and "insulting the revered memory of Abraham Lincoln,"[13] and jailed in Columbus, Kentucky, until after the August election.

[13] By 1866, Etheridge was a leader among Tennessee's Conservative Republicans, allies of Andrew Johnson who opposed Brownlow and sought a return to pre-Civil War conditions.

[2] Brownlow and his associates in the state legislature had aligned themselves with the Radical Republicans, who sought to punish former Confederates and extend the right to vote to freed slaves.

[14] In accepting the nomination, Etheridge blasted the Brownlow administration as an "ignorant, brutal and irresponsible despotism," and stated the goal of the Conservative campaign was to end the "meanest tyranny which was ever hatched in the foul air of distempered times.

"[15] Brownlow's newspaper, the Knoxville Whig, derided Etheridge as a "blasé party scullion, the Thersites of the stump, the trafficker of the most foul, vulgar and filthy slang ever spewed by an obscene mind upon the hustings" whose "violent passions always carried him to offensive extremes.

[23] In spite of the wide margin, Etheridge's campaign boosted the statewide opposition to Brownlow, which eventually led to the fall of the Radical administration and the restoring of voting rights to ex-Confederates in 1870.

[1] Etheridge was elected to the Tennessee Senate in 1869, representing the 22nd district (Weakley, Obion and Henry counties).

[27] This convention, which took place in 1870, restored the right to vote to former Confederates, and as a result, Democrats regained control of the state government.

[38][39] In 1884, he ran for the 9th district congressional seat on the Republican ticket, but was defeated by the Democratic candidate, Presley T. Glass, 13,481 votes to 11,019.

[40] In 1888, Etheridge served alongside Hugh B. Lindsay as an at-large elector for the Republican presidential candidate, Benjamin Harrison.