As expected, General P.G.T. Beauregard, in command of Confederate forces in Charleston, South Carolina, orders that transports not be allowed to resupply nearby Fort Sumter. Thus, United States supply ships en route to Sumter will be prevented from approaching the fort.
War talk is thick among Baptists of Charleston and throughout the South. Most believe war is inevitable, and Baptist newspapers are anxiously reporting on war-related events near and far. Some Union sympathizers are to be found among Baptists in north Georgia, Tennessee, and the South’s rural, mountain regions in general. Yet in the agricultural regions of the South, dependent upon slave labor, many white Baptists are firm in their support of slavery and the Confederacy.
