Today’s edition of the Virginia Baptist Religious Herald continues efforts to reconstruct the Old Confederacy as a righteous slave regime that was overwhelmed by the military might of an ungodly Northern people. Upset that Missouri is requiring all ministers to sign an oath of allegiance to the United States, Southern Baptists lament that the mandate…
Today long-time Kentucky Baptist layman and former state politician Leonard Stephens writes to his brother William. Lamenting, in part, the difficulties he is having with his former slaves, Stephens offers a snapshot of white-black relations in the post-war months: “Since you left I have been considerably troubled over the threatening of my negroes to leave…
In the fall months of 1864 many newly-freed blacks from the Border State of Kentucky enrolled in the Union Army. Also in late 1864, more and more emancipated black Baptists, no longer forced by their masters to attend white churches, began meeting autonomously. The ensuing months have witnessed a continued exodus of black Baptists from…