Week to week, white Southern Baptists are busy defending African slavery and denigrating the United States for attempting to thwart God’s express will for the African race. Several items in this week’s Georgia Baptist Christian Index focus on this very theme. One article castigates Northern Baptists for their duplicity in such decidedly ungodly doings, by…
Privately determined to free the South’s African slaves, U.S President Abraham Lincoln today ratchets up Northern military might while maintaining a cautious public profile regarding slavery. The Union Army receives a boost from the president’s order to draft 300,000 militia for a period of nine months. It is doubtful that Lincoln believes he will need…
Today is the Sabbath, and James W. Stovall, an Alabama slave born in 1837–the son of a white slaveowner and his house mistress–secures permission to attend a Baptist church that is now located behind federal lines in Union-occupied Decatur (at the time known as Cater), Alabama. Stovall, years later and living in Winona, Illinois, describes…