Religion, long woven into the fabric of the South prior to the war, was used an ideological weapon against the abolitionist North decades before the war began. More to the point, white religion is that which has served to uphold the moral and biblical righteousness of white supremacy and African slavery while creating a Christian…
In the midst of secession fever in January 1861, the (white) First Baptist Church of Nashville, Tennessee established a “Second Colored Baptist Mission” in Edgefield, east of Nashville’s downtown, on Fatherland Street. The mission church was supervised by a white committee and pastored by George Dardis, a free black preacher. Nelson G. Merry, free black…
This month Osgood Church Wheeler is appointed secretary and manager of the United States Sanitary Commission for the Pacific Coast. He joins many other Northern Baptist ministers serving in U.S. agencies that assist freedmen and soldiers. A native of Wolcott (Butler), Wayne County, New York, Wheeler was born in 1816 and grew up in modest…