Following a number of letters written on his behalf to U.S. president Andrew Johnson, including one by Richard Fuller, Baltimore pastor and former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Baptist minster and editor J. R. Graves is granted amnesty. The former resident of Nashville, Tennessee returns to the state and settles in Memphis, where for…
In a reminder that many Baptists of the South are just as pro-war as other southerners, an announcement in this week’s Memphis Daily Appeal makes note of a new weapon of war invented by an enterprising Baptist minster: The Rev. Mr. Graves, a well known elder of the Baptist church, yesterday showed us a new…
Nashville, Tennessee’s second largest city (behind Memphis) and militarily exposed in the wake of the United States’ capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, has been vacated of Confederate soldiers in anticipation of the arrival of Union forces. The retreating Confederates burned down the city’s bridges, and some residents joined in the evacuation. One of…