In Georgia, the state’s secession convention continues under the leadership of Governor Joseph Brown, a Southern Baptist. Delegates pass a Bill of Rights for white citizens of the new Confederate state. The document both declares that Georgia is a Christian nation, and disallows a religious establishment: The prevalence of the Christian Religion among the people,…
Before a packed sanctuary at the First Baptist Church of Macon, Georgia, Ebenezer W. Warren, pastor of the Macon congregation, delivers a sermon defending black slavery as biblical. (The Macon Telegraph printed the sermon in its February 7, 1861 edition.) Warren ties slavery explicitly to the Bible and the will of God, arguing that biblical…
“The disunion mania which now pervades the breasts of so many Southern men progresses with unprecedented rapidity, and like the devastating tornado threatens to prostrate all in the dust.” So declares Alfred Dockery (1797-1873), slaveholder, leader among North Carolina Baptists, a general in the N.C. Militia, a state senator, and a U.S. Congressman. As a…