Camp Chase, Ohio
A Baptist pastor from Ohio today writes to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States:
[To the President of the United States.] Honorable and Dear Sir: I address you though a stranger because I feel so deep an interest in our country. Having sons in the Third and Thirteenth Ohio Regiments I feel that I have some interest in the great work which is now going forward, but the subject which prompts me to address you is growing evil. I allude to the peculiar annoyance which is experienced almost every day in our capital. You will see by a column from the Cincinnati Commercial what a wide feeling has been awakened upon the subject of the rebel prisoners. Those officers who have lifted up their hands against the Government and shed the blood of our sons walk the streets bold and defiant, record their names at our hotels as C. S. Army and are encouraged in these impudent airs by some of Ohio’s degenerate sons, and even women seem to hold out to them the idea that a reaction is taking place in the minds of the North by which means the South will soon receive their rights. Now I am told that the matter has become too much almost to be endured, and unless something be done to relieve the excited feelings I fear that an outbreak of outraged feelings may lead to the most serious consequences.
I am informed that our Legislature would pass an order for our Executive to take the matter in hand, but they and we suppose that all these matters are in the hands of the General Government. Although a stranger and perhaps one who should not have presumed to address you, still I could no longer rest at ease. To have our sons toil in the Army and be subjected to trials and the most severe deprivations, and then to have these rebel officers actually at their ease in our streets speaking treason openly and boldly is almost too much for human endurance, and to have them where the sympathizers with the South shall make dinners and parties for them while our soldiers are treated like beasts when they are taken prisoners is too much. I speak for many when I beseech you to abate the evil. Hardly a man in our streets but alludes to it. Not a paper in our whole region but is out upon it. We do hope something may be done. Let the prisoners be kept in Camp Chase and not allowed to go beyond its lines. Let rebel sympathizers be kept from them unless sharers of their confinement and we shall be satisfied. We are willing to give what we possess for our Government; our property and our sons, yea ourselves, but do I beseech you protect us from the insults of these rebel prisoners.
I am, with respect, yours, &c.,
N. A. Reed,
Pastor of the Market Street Baptist Church.
Meanwhile, Georgia Baptists continue their annual meeting at the First Baptist Church of LaGrange. They are unapologetic Confederate nationalists. Among the day’s action, they express “gratification at the recent judicious and patriotic action of the Governor of Georgia in the suppression of distilleries in the State,” and take up a collection for an army missionary.
Ebenezer W. Warren, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Christ of Macon, offers a resolution which is adopted:
Resolved, That a committee of five be appointed from this Convention to memoralize our Government so to shape our national affairs as to prevent, as far as possible, the violation of the Sabbath by those in its employment, in the discharge of their official duties.
In many other ways, Georgia Baptists assembled are preoccupied by the war. This they share with Northern Baptist pastor N. A. Reed.
Source: Camp Chase Chronicles (link); Minutes, 1862 Georgia Baptist Convention (link); image (link)
