Today the African Baptist Church of Darien, Georgia, the oldest black church in the county, is destroyed by the Union 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Colored Regiment and the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers. Most of the town, in fact, is looted and destroyed by the Union troops, under the orders of the 2nd’s commander, Colonel James Montgomery.…
Following U.S. President Abraham Lincoln‘s Emancipation Proclamation of January , 1863, a group of approximately 75 enslaved blacks escaped from Boone County, Missouri and made their way northward. Many if not most were of the Baptist faith. Accounts indicate that the runaway slaves traveled part of the way by river and were rescued and towed…
Today’s edition of the Port Royal-published New South Newspaper, the Union-produced publication of federally-occupied coastal South Carolina, notes an upcoming fund raiser to be held at the First African Baptist Church of Hilton Head. A special effort to raise money for the erection of a monument to the memory of the late Col. Shaw, of…