Trickery is ever afoot in the border states as Confederate and Union partisans vie for control of disputed territory. One of many Baptist families caught up in the conflict on a local level is the Smith family. Obediah, a native Kentuckian, is a Baptist pastor of the Missionary Baptist persuasion. A pioneering family of Missouri,…
Baptist ministers respond to the war in diverse ways. Some remain in their pulpits; others leave the pastorate to enroll as chaplains or missionaries or soldiers; and a few step down from preaching in order to engage the enemy in an unofficial capacity. The latter is the case with an unnamed Baptist minister in Arkansas…
As U.S. General Ulysses S. Grant‘s army marches southward through Louisiana, a contingent of Union naval vessels prepares to slip by Vicksburg’s batteries under the cover of darkness. A key city in the war against the South, the capture of the Mississippi city would split the Confederacy east and west while giving the United States…