The Confederacy is losing the war, but the entire American nation is suffering. This week, long-time Kentucky Baptist layman and former state politician Leonard Stephens (illustration) writes his brother William (now living in Missouri), bewailing what the war has wrought in his home state. Stephens letter offers insight into race relations as the end of…
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…
Elijah P. Marrs, Company L, 12th U.S. Colored Artillery, experiences an adventure-filled day in Kentucky. A slave until running away mere months ago, the Union soldier and Baptist layman, his company tasked with recruiting new black soldiers, unexpectedly confronts the prospect of death at the hands of Confederate soldiers. Fortunately, the encounter takes place in…