Jacob M. C Breaker (1824-1894), born in South Carolina, is a leader among the state’s Southern Baptists. Like most prominent Southern Baptists, he is a member of a wealthy slave-owning family. In Jacob’s childhood years his father, Lewis Frederick Breaker–a wealthy merchant and plantation owner and a deacon at First Baptist Camden, South Carolina–moved the…
Today’s annual meeting of the Erie Baptist Association of New York echoes many other Northern Baptist associations this fall in terms of expressing support for emancipation of slaves and the war against Southern slavery. One Erie Baptist resolution succintly summarizes the association’s beliefs in terms of war and slavery: Resolved, That we have special occasion…
Robert G. Shaw, commander of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment — the first African-American regiment of the war — stationed in Union-controlled Beaufort District, South Carolina, for the second day in a row attends a local African Baptist church, writing of the experience to his mother. His words describing today’s Sunday service are not as complementary…