As the year draws to a close and a week following the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution abolishing slavery, few white Southern Baptists in state newspapers bother to discuss the advance of freedom in America. Rather, today’s Virginia Baptist Religious Herald contains articles about a variety of other items and issues. Temperance is…
While only minor skirmishes occur this day, in Virginia Union General Ulysses S. Grant orders Major General Phil Sheridan‘s force of some 10,000 cavalry to move south of Winchester on a mission to destroy the Virginia Central Railroad and James River Canal. In addition, Sheridan is tasked with capturing Lynchburg, if possible. Indeed, with Sherman…
The Civil War has raised a host of issues for white Baptists of the South, a largely rural people who, echoing the early frontier ethos of their spiritual ancestors, frame religion as personal piety rather than social responsibility. Local church minutes of the 1850s and 1860s are often concerned with personal sins such as card…