Two days after leaving Rome, Georgia, Union General William T. Sherman arrives back in Atlanta.
This time, Sherman will not stay long. With 60,000 men under his command, the general divides his forces into a left wing and a right wing. On the morrow they will leave Atlanta to march to the Georgia sea port of Atlanta, covering a fifty-mile swath of land north to south.
Meanwhile, as the rate of slaves escaping to freedom behind Union lines grows ever greater, the South Benson Baptist Church of Franklin County, Kentucky laments “that our Colored Brethren do not meet with us as they did in days past.”
Many white Baptists in the Confederacy, so long committed to white supremacy and black slavery, seemingly cannot fathom why their slaves are turning their backs on their white masters and friends. Many slaves, previously forced to attend white-led congregations that too often preach slavery as biblical, are now expressing their autonomy by choosing to worship God on their own terms–terms that do not include the presence of whites.
The South Benson Baptist Church, like many other congregations, is learning a new lesson the hard way.
Source: Luke Edward Harlow, From Border South to Solid South: Religion, Race and the Making of Confederate Kentucky, 1830-1880, 2009, p. 235
