This month U.S. Army Gen. Oliver O. Howard calls for a gathering of Edisto Island’s freedmen. Howard is loathe to break the bad news to the assembled crowd, representative of some 40,000 former slaves who now till what they think are their own lands, given to them by Union General William T. Sherman earlier this…
Born in 1839 in Lowndes County, Georgia, the future Rev. James Madison “Boss” Hendry as a child moved with his parents to Florida. There he lived when the war broke out. He acquired the nickname “Boss” because of his “aggressive” nature. Enlisting on May 4, 1862 as a private at Fort Meade, Florida, he serves…
Treated as non-humans by Southern state laws in the decades prior to and during the war, slaves were not allowed to marry. Many slave couples compensated by engaging in simple rituals signifying informal marriages. White Baptist leaders of the South remained defiantly supportive of black slavery throughout the war, although some voiced support of laws…