Austin served as a clerk in the Post Office Department at Washington, D.C., from 1879 to 1881.
Following the death of Leonidas Houk in 1891, the Tennessee Republican Party gradually split into two quarreling factions: one led by Brownlow, which Austin supported, and the other led by former congressman Henry Clay Evans of Chattanooga, which had the support of Chattanooga businessman Newell Sanders.