Baptists and the American Civil War: January 9, 1865
In Union-controlled Tennessee, formerly enslaved African Americans, many of them Baptist, are publicly expressing their sentiments to the state’s politicians, including Governor Andrew Johnson. African American attorney John Mercer Langston, born a slave, is one of the most prominent voices. On January 2, he addressed some 3,500 Unionists, 3,000 of them black, declaring that the…