Confederate forces seem unable to catch a break. Today in Missouri, while in full retreat, Confederate Major General Sterling Price and his contingent of cavalry are attacked, yet again, by Union forces. The Second Battle of Newtonia witnesses yet another Confederate defeat, albeit with light casualties on both sides.
Under the cover of darkness, the Confederates retreat again, heading southward to the safety (hopefully) of Indian territory.
Meanwhile, this week’s North Carolina Baptist Biblical Recorder publishes a brief commentary seemingly praising the very man whose cardinal principal (and that of Baptists since their beginnings in the early 17th century)–church state separation–Baptists of the Confederacy so readily departed from in order to defend the enslavement of Africans.
A correspondent of one of our exchanges says: “The Monticello Estate, the seat of Thomas Jefferson near Charlottesville, Va, was ordered to be sequestered a few days ago–its present owner, Uriah P Levy, being an alien enemy. We hope the title, when the property is sold, will pass into the hands of some Southern gentlemen who will pay a decent respect to the place on which repose the ashes of one of Virginia’s most eminent statesmen.”
Prior to the war, Baptists North and South remained faithful to church state separation, grateful for Thomas Jefferson’s alliance in securing the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Southern Baptists, however, traded their heritage of church state separation for a belief in the Confederacy as God’s chosen nation in which the government should mandate public allegiance to Christianity.
In reality, Levy (a Commodore in the U.S. Navy and Jewish) has been dead since 1862, his will naming the United States government as administrator of the Monticello estate which he had acquired some years prior to the war.
Following the war, the estate is eventually turned over to Levy’s nephew, Jefferson Monroe Levy.
Sources: Second Battle of Newtonia (link) and (link); “Monticello,” Biblical Recorder, October 26, 1864 (link); “The Levy Family and Monticello” (link); also see Bruce T. Gourley, Diverging Loyalties: Baptists in Middle Georgia During the Civil War, Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2011 (link)
