Today long-time Kentucky Baptist layman and former state politician Leonard Stephens writes to his brother William. Lamenting, in part, the difficulties he is having with his former slaves, Stephens offers a snapshot of white-black relations in the post-war months: “Since you left I have been considerably troubled over the threatening of my negroes to leave…
The worst disaster in American Maritime history occurs today in the Mississippi River, exceeding even that of the Titanic many years later. During the war the steamship Sultana plied the Mississippi between St. Louis and New Orleans, often carrying military personnel. Now, with the war effectively over (former Confederate president Jefferson Davis yet in hiding…
Today Uriah King, a Baptist, Illinoisan, and the son of southern-born parents and grandparents, enlists in Company E, Twenty-fourth Illinois Infantry. Few soldiers experience as much time inside Confederate prison camps as does King: Uriah King obtained a common school education and was reared to farm life. He has seen the county develop from a…