Mullins was praised by radicals and derided by conservatives for his actions in the legislature. Brownlow's newspaper, the Knoxville Whig, stated that Mullins was a "terror to the copperheads" in the legislature, and described him as an "old patriot" who "stands like the pillars of the Alleghenies, unheeding the storms of copperheadism and treason, which beat in unrelenting fury above his head.""Hon. James Mullins," Knoxville Whig, 7 March 1866, p. 2. The Cleveland Banner, on the other hand, stated that Mullins was "making an ass of himself.""Queries," Knoxville Whig, 8 August 1866, p. 2. Accessed at Library of Congress Chronicling America database, 11 May 2013.
