eventually defaulted following the Panic of 1873. Brown's administration enacted the state's first truly effective public school legislation, which called for the establishment of county and city school superintendents, and the creation of the office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Brown also advocated a board of directors to govern local school districts, and the organization of separate schools for African-American and white children. To support these schools, Governor Brown called for the Legislature to institute a small state tax and give cities and counties the power to raise additional taxes. In 1875, along with several other former Confederate generals, he competed for an open United States Senate seat, but lost on the 54th ballot in the state legislature to former President Andrew Johnson. Later life In 1876, Brown, who supported Thomas A. Scott's efforts to build a transcontinental railroad in the South, joined the Texas & Pacific Railroad as a vice president. He was appointed receiver of this railroad in 1885, and was elevated to president in 1888. The following year, he became president of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, which was one of the largest industrial firms in the South. Brown also served as president of the Bon Air Coal Company, a coal mining operation on the Cumberland Plateau near Crossville, in the 1880s. Brown fell ill in the Summer of 1889, and traveled to Red Boiling Springs, a mineral springs resort in north-central Tennessee, in hopes of recovering. On August 17, 1889, however, he suffered a stomach hemorrhage and died. His body was returned to Pulaski and interred in the city's Maplewood Cemetery. Personal life Brown's first wife, Anne Pointer, died in 1858. They had no children. He married his second wife, Elizabeth Childress of Murfreesboro, in 1864. Her paternal aunt was First Lady Sarah Childress Polk, and her father resided at the Childress-Ray House. They had four children: Marie, Daisy, Elizabeth, and John C. Brown, Jr. Brown's wife, Elizabeth, was among the women featured in Annie Somers Gilchrist's 1902 book, Some Representative Women of Tennessee. The Browns' daughter, Marie, was married to Governor Benton McMillin. Dates of rank Private: May 1, 1861 Colonel: May 16, 1861 Brigadier-General: August 30, 1862 Major-General: August 4, 1864 See also List of American Civil War generals References Further reading Warner, Ezra J., Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959, .