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." 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." The "Whig" further suggested that Conservatives reluctantly chose Etheridge out of desperation after more plausible Conservatives rejected the nomination.