The Civil War years were a time of innovation made necessary by a great conflict the likes of which the nation had never before experienced. Hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers, North and South alike, led to unparalleled hospital construction, alongside advances in new medical techniques, methodologies and knowledge. In the world of weaponry, rifling…
Edmond Kelley is Tennessee’s first ordained African American Baptist minister. Born a slave in Tennessee in 1817, he escaped to Massachusetts, where in 1851 he published his life’s story to date. Having secretly taught himself to read during his youth, in 1843 Kelley was ordained by the white First Baptist Church of Nashville. Three years…
Sam Richards, an Atlanta businessman and Southern Baptist who fled the city for New York following Sherman’s capture of the city, today arrives back in Atlanta. Like many other middle class white Southerners (of whom there are relatively few, actually) who did not serve during the war, whether having temporarily lived in the North or…