During his final term, he was officially censured for delivering a speech excoriating Massachusetts Representative Benjamin F. Butler.

Having already alienated the free silver faction of his party, he backed "Goldbug" candidate Cassius M. Clay Jr. for the Democratic nomination in the upcoming gubernatorial election.

Brown became the legal counsel for former Kentucky Secretary of State Caleb Powers, an accused conspirator in the assassination.

[4] Brown received his early education in the schools of Elizabethtown, and in 1851, at the age of sixteen, matriculated at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.

[3] His reputation as an orator put him in high demand, but his zealous criticism of the Know Nothing Party drew threats against his life.

[3] Voters in his district refused to elect anyone else to fill the vacancy, and Governor John W. Stevenson filed an official protest of the House's action, but the seat remained unfilled throughout the Fortieth Congress.

[3] Brown's most notable action in the House was a speech he made on February 4, 1875, in response to Massachusetts Representative Benjamin F. Butler's call to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

Referring to comments Butler had made the previous day about lawlessness against African-Americans in the South, Brown claimed that unjust charges had been made against Southerners by an individual "who is outlawed in his own home by respectable society, whose name is synonymous with falsehood, who is the champion, and has been on all occasions, of fraud; who is the apologist of thieves, who is such a prodigy of vice and meanness that to describe him would sicken the imagination and exhaust invective.

"[10] At this point in the speech, Speaker of the House James G. Blaine interrupted Brown, asking if he was referring to a member of the House; Brown gave an ambiguous response before continuing: "If I wished to describe all that was pusillanimous in war, inhuman in peace, forbidden in morals, and infamous in politics, I should call it 'Butlerizing'.

[12] The Republicans nominated Andrew T. Wood, a lawyer from Mount Sterling, who had failed in earlier elections for Congress and state attorney general.

The divided Democrats had taken no stand on the document as part of their convention's platform, and Wood spent much of the campaign trying to get Brown to declare his support for or opposition to it.

For the remainder of the race, Wood touted an alleged conspiracy between Brown and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad to thwart meaningful corporate regulations, but the issue failed to gain much traction.

[11] Democrats, who were used to carrying the agrarian vote by a wide margin, were especially concerned that the Farmers' Alliance, consisting of over 125,000 members in Kentucky, would endorse Erwin.

[11] Turmoil marked the legislative sessions of Brown's term; his supporters had been either unwilling or unable to influence the rest of the Democratic slate, and tensions over the currency issue soon split the administration.

[4] When the General Assembly convened on the last day of 1891, Brown reported that he had appointed a commission to study the impact of the new constitution on the state's existing laws.

[16] Part of the reason for the extended session was each chamber's difficulty in achieving a quorum; a Louisville newspaper reported that, for an entire month, the largest attendance in the House of Representatives was 61 of 100 members.

[17] Major legislation advocated by Brown and passed by the General Assembly included improvements in tax collection processes and tighter controls on corporations.

[16] The Mason and Foard Company, which leased convict labor to build railroads, resented Brown's prison reforms.

[20] During the 1894 legislative session, Brown advocated and won passage of several government efficiency measures, including a bill to transfer certain state governmental expenses to the counties, a bill to reform state printing contracts, and measures clarifying laws governing asylums and charitable institutions.

[13] The most significant bill, and the one that generated the most debate, was a law giving married women individual property rights for the first time in state history.

[20] Measures advocated by Brown but not enacted by the Assembly included broadening the powers of the state railroad commission, establishing the offices of state bank inspector and superintendent of public printing, and reforming prison management, including separate detention of adolescent criminals.

[23] A few months later, his son, Archibald Dixon Brown, divorced his wife; it was subsequently discovered that he had been carrying on an extramarital affair.

[23] Acting on an anonymous tip, his lover's husband found the couple at a brothel in Louisville; drawing his pistol, he shot his wife and Archibald Brown, killing them both.

[1][6] He would later claim that he had only run in order to improve Democratic voter turnout for William Jennings Bryan's 1896 presidential bid.

[28] Despite his proclaimed lack of interest in the gubernatorial nomination, Brown's name was entered as a candidate on the first ballot, along with Parker Watkins Hardin, former Congressman William J.

The convention was thrown into chaos when a widely known agreement between Stone and Goebel – designed to get Hardin out of the race – broke down.

[33] In addition to Brown, the Honest Election League nominated a full slate of candidates for the other state offices.

Outgoing Senator Blackburn also charged that Brown was bolting the party again, just as he had in supporting Stephen Douglas over John C. Breckinridge for president in 1860.

Brown, and other speakers enlisted on behalf of his campaign, frequently called attention to Goebel's refusal to acknowledge the challenge or agree to a debate.

Two weeks prior to the election, Brown was injured in a fall at Leitchfield; as a result of the injury, he was confined to his home and unable to deliver campaign speeches, despite several attempts to allow him to speak from a chair or wheelchair.