Today many white citizens of Newnan, Georgia convene in the city’s Methodist church to affirm, amidst the desolation of war visited upon their state, their commitment to the Confederate States of America. Among those present are many Baptists.
A committee of 26 of “the most influential, wealthy and intelligent citizens” of the county is formed. Among them are many slaveowners (present or recently). The chairman of the committee is John H. Caldwell, the Methodist pastor. Resolutions are drafted. One resolution condemns the citizens of Savannah who have cooperated with General William T. Sherman‘s army.
“[I]n the darkest hour of our struggle,” one resolution declares, “we renew our patriotic covenant and again pledge our fortunes, our lives and our sacred honor to maintain and defend our country’s cause, for her to live and die.” Claiming to speak for all white Georgians, the citizens of Newnan promise to maintain the fight until “their rights” are acknowledged, and to refuse any peace proposition that does not “secure for us our independence as a nation.”
Meanwhile in South Carolina, the Confederate Baptist newspaper criticizes yet again the North’s “crusade” against the South’s cause of African slavery. The writer looks forward to the day the Yankees are “driven from our country, and thus deprived of the pleasant exercitation of burning houses and stealing negroes.”
But are the dreaded Yankees really as evil as some believe? Another article in today’s Confederate Baptist seems to indicate otherwise.
Amid the gloom, which has settled over the track of Gen. Sherman’s march through Georgia, it is cheering to behold some little light. Hatred and fear sometimes transform an enemy into a demon, and people turn pale at the exaggerated story of his enormities. Gen. Sherman is a husband and a father; and it is not likely that he uttered certain fiendish sentiments, which have been attributed to him, nor sanctioned the atrocities, which have been laid to to the charge of his men. The editor of the Mobile Register gives the result of his observations:
“We passed over the track of Sherman’s march through Georgia, via Sparta and Milledgeville to Macon. We saw fewer signs of devastation than we expected. In a distance of fifty miles we counted but three barns and gin houses and two dwellings burned. The greatest devastation was visited on the corn cribs, and smoke houses, and the stock that was driven off their line of march. In Milledgeville, Sherman expressed his astonishment at the richness of the country in food supplies. The State House was defaced, the Governor’s mansion gutted, and the Penitentiary and Railway Depot burned. No private dwellings were burned, and those only robbed that were left vacant by their occupants.—While there were many cases of personal loss, the town got off well, if we consider the character of the army and the fanatic [abolitionist] that led it.”
The extent of the devastation visited upon Georgia by Sherman’s army, it seems, is up for debate.
Sources: Daniel W. Stowell, Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 38 (link); “The New Crusade,” Confederate Baptist, January 18, 1865; “A Ray of Light,” Confederate Baptist, January 18, 1865
