Southern Baptist periodicals waste few opportunities to criticize abolitionist efforts to provide education and social relief services for former slaves. Blacks, after all, are an inferior race incapable of intelligence. Their God-willed lot in life is bondage in the service of whites. Today’s Kentucky Baptist Western Recorder succinctly sums up the sneering contempt that most…
Tennessee businessman and Baptist layman Joseph Alexander Mabry, Jr. (1826-1882), takes the oath of allegiance to the United States of America. Born in Knox County to a political family, Mabry probably attended Holston Seminary, a Methodist institution, before becoming a land speculator in Knoxville in the early 1850s. Using his political connections, Mabry in 1858…
The steady drip of bad news within the Confederacy continues. The summer and fall of 1863 witnessed a growing number of soldier desertions, a problem that only worsens during the cold days of winter. Already short of manpower, military officials (unlike earlier in the war) now routinely execute deserters who are unfortunate enough to be…