Mere weeks after U. S. President Abraham Lincoln offers amnesty to white Southerners who pledge loyalty to the United States and encourages Southern states to take steps to be readmitted to the Union, many Confederate citizens are seriously considering Lincoln’s offer. Lincoln is hopeful that his olive branch will quickly peel off Arkansas and Tennessee…
The war grinds on in the midst of winter, the cold largely confining the conflict to winter army camps, Union-held towns and cities, freedmen camps, war prisons,army hospitals, statehouses and courthouses, newspapers, street corner conversations, sermons, and sparse kitchen tables. Many white Baptists of the South keep abreast as best as they can of the…
Southern Baptists’ concern from the children of the war leads to the introduction of a new Sunday School publication this month. “Kind Words” is a child’s “Sunday-school paper” that is published by the recently-formed Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. The board’s three officials, Charles J. Elford (board director and printer), Basil Manly,…