The new paradigm of Southern freedom poses a challenge for white citizens. Following two centuries of enslavement, blacks, now free, have little interest in maintaining close associations with whites. At the same time, a general lack of education, housing and jobs among freedmen ensures that relations with whites will have to continue, at least to…
During the war years Southern Baptist elites have constructed a narrative of a Christian Confederacy and a Satanic Union, at least one to the point of labeling the abolitionist North as the “final Antichrist.” Abolitionist Christians—and that includes a seeming majority in the North by this point—are, according to this storyline, the very instruments of…
By now the South is a vast battlefield with only a few pockets of safety. Virginia is increasingly overrun by the enemy. From the Shenandoah Valley to Petersburg and further eastward, Northern armies are embedded in the Old Dominion, easily outnumbering Confederate defenders. Much of coastal North Carolina is under Union control, while periodical forays…