Sherman’s Army Entering Savannah
By 3:00 AM Confederate forces have left Savannah. Hours later, Mayor Richard D. Arnold walks out and surrenders the city to waiting Union troops. Black citizens cheer as Sherman’s army then marches into the city and hoists the United States flag at the City Exchange.
The general, however, is not with his troops. Sherman, not realizing that the Confederates had decided to surrender and instead anticipating that a siege would be required to take Savannah, is making preparations on nearby Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, when the city falls. Arriving back at Savannah at night, Sherman discovers, to his pleasant surprise, that the city is his.
As Savannah falls and formerly enslaved blacks rejoice, in nearby South Carolina the Confederate Baptist newspaper assures readers that reports indicate that Nashville has been captured by the Confederacy. While the news may give cheer to readers, the report is erroneous.
Another article in the Confederate Baptist offers a frightening assessment of what will happen to the South if the United States were to win the war.
The consequences, which will follow the triumph of our foes, are such as we could not pray to be visited even upon them—crimes at which morality shudders, and cruelties from which humanity shrinks with horror. This is to be our lot, if we fail. Let us, therefore, appeal, in humility and faith to God our Preserver, and prepare ourselves to suffer any extremity rather than put ourselves into the hands of the enemy.
Yet another article implores readers to save their old breadcrumbs and mix them in with dough in order to waste nothing at a time when hunger is rampant and the price of flour exorbitant.
Northward, meanwhile, the first ever state-wide Michigan assembly of black Baptists meets at Detroit’s Second Baptist Church. In the first meeting of its kind in Michigan, a total of 48 delegates represent the interests “of the colored men of the State.” The “delegates without exception discussed the ability the questions incident to the past, present, and future condition of the colored men of the country.”
Thus, even as newly freed slaves are celebrating their newly-acquired freedom, some Northern blacks in Baptist life, many free for many years, are now organizing and planning for what they hope will be a prosperous future.
Sources: “Sherman’s March to the Sea,” New Encyclopedia Georgia (link); “Port Pulaski and the Defense of Savannah,” National Park Service (link); “Secular News,” “The Times,” and “Save Your Old Bread,” Confederate Baptist, December 21, 1864; image (link); The African Repository, Volume XLI, Washington: American Colonization Society, 1865, p. 159, quoting from Detroit Advertiser, December 26, 1864 (link)
