Savannah, Georgia, a plantation-driven city of the Deep South of which Baptists have long claimed a formal dominance among slaves of religious persuasions, continues to undergo radical transformation almost three months after Union capture of the city. Many remaining white citizens are far from happy with the freedom now enjoyed by former slaves, freedom unimaginable…
Today in Natchez, Mississippi, a Union-occupied city since September 1863, an experiment begins in the city’s Rose Hill Baptist Church, a historic black congregation. The experiment is in the form of a church day school for black children, a school enabled by the support of Northern abolitionists who provide teachers for the new school. In…
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln‘s Emancipation Proclamation on New Year’s Day has galvanized much of the Northern population, especially in New York City — with one exception: working class immigrants. In particular, since Lincoln’s 1860 election Irish and German immigrants had been warned by the Democratic party that the Republicans were intent on emancipating African slaves,…