Today the most prominent Baptist in Georgia is effectively in exile as Milledgeville, the state capital, is firmly under the control of the Union Army. Governor Joseph Brown, a member of the First Baptist Church of Milledgeville, fled upon the arrival of the Federals on November 23. Traveling southward, he now finds refuge in his…
The war grinds on in the midst of winter, the cold largely confining the conflict to winter army camps, Union-held towns and cities, freedmen camps, war prisons,army hospitals, statehouses and courthouses, newspapers, street corner conversations, sermons, and sparse kitchen tables. Many white Baptists of the South keep abreast as best as they can of the…
This year, in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation, the founding of African Baptist churches proliferates. Unfortunately, the details of the formation of many of these congregations are nebulous. According to one early source, the Fourth Baptist Church, African (later Metropolitan Baptist Church) is formed this month in the District of Columbia “by a few holding…