Other than the first year of the war, the South Carolina coast remained under the control of Union Armies during the great conflict, driving white citizens off the large plantations that marked that part of the state. Tens of thousands of slaves fled to their freedom behind the protection of Union lines, where Northern Christians…
Tens of thousands of former slaves were fighting for the United States against the Confederacy by the end of the war. One was Paul Sandridge. Born into slavery near Lynchburg, Virginia in 1841, Sandridge was liberated from bondage upon the death of his owner in 1853. As a free man he settled near Portsmouth, Ohio,…
Missourian Franklin (“Frank”) James (brother to Jesse James) is the son of a now-deceased Baptist minister (Robert James, who assisted in the formation of William Jewel College) and a Sunday School teacher in his Baptist church. Enrolling in the Confederate Army early in the war, Frank soon returned home. When Union soldiers raided the family…