In Spartanburg, South Carolina prominent state South Carolina Southern Baptists assemble for the annual meeting of the State Convention of the Baptist Denomination in South Carolina. The percentage of slaveholders among attendees is much greater than among South Carolina Baptists at large. Prominent Baptists include Basil Manly, James P. Boyce, and John A. Broaddus, all Calvinists and all prominent Southern Baptists on the national scene.
Following a time of preaching and the appointment of committees, several reports are given, including a Sunday School report. At this time, Sunday School remains confined to the realm of children, and many churches in the South have yet to embrace this ministry. The war has restricted the publication and distribution of Bibles and other printed materials. Yet church ministries have only been lightly impacted, according to the upbeat report:
The influences of the present unhappy state of the country upon the Sunday School cause is by no means as discouraging as supposed by some. Indeed, it has not materially lessened the numbers of those attending the various schools. In many cases whole Bible classes have gone, as in the case of the Bennettsville Church. In other instances teachers have left; here and there valuable ones, but the great mass of the teachers remain. The materials which operated mainly in the Sunday School before the war, namely, the females of the Churches, are still as actively engaged in the work as ever they were. While nine-tenths, if no larger proportion, of the material operated upon, the children and young people of the country, are still, also, at their homes, and can, by the continued efforts of the friends of the Sunday School cause, be retained, in the midst of all our troubles as a nation, in the Sunday School, where they may be taught how they may be good soldiers of Jesus Christ. But one Sunday School in the State of South Carolina has suspended its operations on account of the state of the country, according to the best information of the General Superintendent, while it is a fact, perhaps indisputable, that there are in South Carolina a greater number of Sunday Schools in operation in Baptist Churches than ever before. Schools have been organized every week in numbers since the present trouble began. The great mass of the Sunday School material is at home, and will remain there, whether we have war or peace. The indications of the times, apart from any considerations of duty and obligation, encourage the friends of the children to renewed and continuous efforts in their behalf.
Meanwhile, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and Congress are working to shore up the Union Army in the wake of the recent humiliating defeat at Bull Run / Manassas. Today Major-General John Charles Fremont arrives in St. Louis and takes command of the Union army’s Western Department, as skirmishing continues in the border state of Missouri.
The Union cause, however, is not helped by events in the Southwest. In Indian territory near Texas, U.S. Major Isaac Lynde vacates Fort Fillmore, a frontier outpost threatened by Confederate forces. Securing the fort for the Confederacy is Capt. John R. Baylor.
Source: “Minutes of the Forty-first Anniversary of the State Convention of the Baptist Denomination in S. C., Held at Spartanburg, July 26th-28th, 1861” (link)
