Civl War Era Map of the U.S. Northeast
Many Northern Baptist associations meet this week and voice support of U. S. President Abraham Lincoln’s recent call for emancipation of slaves in the border states.
Meanwhile, many white Southern Baptist continue marching off to war in defense of African slavery. Among those enrolling today is 26-year old William M. Williams of Buchanan, Georgia, whose wife is the daughter of Massachusetts natives. Williams, a Baptist layman, enlists with the 40th Georgia Regiment under Capt. Alexander Merchanson. His service is brief, and mostly confined to Tennessee, as he becomes sick and leaves the army, never to return. Nonetheless, Williams’ Georgia property is destroyed during the course of the war, and he works hard to make a good life for his family afterwards.
African slaves are not entirely pawns in this conflict. Increasingly, slaves take advantage of opportunities to flee from enslavement, defying white Southern Baptist claims that Africans are happy in their state of slavery.
Sources: Robert H. Abzug, Religion and the Radical Republican Movement, 1860-1870. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1990, pp. 25-26 (link); S. Emmett Lucas, Jr.,Memoirs of Georgia: Historical and Biographical Sketches, 1896, p. 1055; map image (link)
"MEMOIRS OF GEORGIA", Historical and Biographical Sketches, 1896.
