Today Texas Baptist layman, lawyer and former slaveowner Jacob Eliot takes “the oath of allegiance to U.S. government.” Eliot, however, yet often refers to black individuals with the phrase, “belongs to.” Many other white Southerners also continue thinking of black persons as property, rather than free persons. In many instances, local Baptist church records employ…
William A. Boon was born on January 15, 1845. Of mixed racial heritage, Boon was born a free man. As a young adult, his skin was light enough that he possibly passed himself off, at times, as a white man. On August 4, 1864 Boon enlisted in the Union Army and was assigned to the…
Baptists of Kansas City were involved in the abolition movement before and during the Civil War. In the first two years of the war, runaway slaves (or contraband) found refuge in Union Army camps and towns and cities of the North. Of the latter, Leavenworth, Kansas served as a refuge for runaway slaves in the…