Since late January, the American Baptist Home Mission Society has been contemplating and planning for work among freedmen living under the protection of the Union Army in the coastal areas of South Carolina and beyond, inquiring “into their needs and the opportunities for religious work.” The Society’s leaders have since determined that missionaries and teachers need to be sent to emancipated Africans. Today, they prepare for the Society’s upcoming meeting and trust that Society members will agree with their assessment and recommendations.
Among those hoping that the task of educating freedmen will be embraced by the Society is the organization’s president, New York Senator Ira Harris, a committed Baptist layman. The direction proposed by Harris and other Society leadership offers a new direction for the missions agency, an opportunity to uplift an entire class of Americans and expand American Baptist influence into the South some seventeen years after Baptists of the South dis-fellowshipped from their Northern counterparts over the very issue of slavery.
The hard work is soon rewarded. On May 29 the Society meets and affirms the suggestions of their leadership, declaring that “we see the Divine hand most distinctly and most imperatively beckoning us on to the occupancy of a field broader, more important, more promising, than has ever yet invited our toil.”
Sources: Henry L. Morehouse, The Baptist Home Missions Monthly, Vols. 23-24, p. 249 (link)
