Robert G. Shaw, commander of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment — the first African-American regiment of the war — stationed in Union-controlled Beaufort District, South Carolina, for the second day in a row attends a local African Baptist church, writing of the experience to his mother. His words describing today’s Sunday service are not as complementary…
On this fourth of July, the outlook for the Confederacy plunges. A heavy rain blankets the blood-soaked, body-strewn battlefield following the three day Battle of Gettysburg. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee‘s Army of Northern Virginia stares across the carnage to the lines of Union Gen. George G. Meade‘s Army of the Potomac. Lee anticipates another…
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.…