The citizens of middle Georgia yet live far from any battlefield action, despite Union encroachments as far south as the state’s coastal islands and, since the fall of 1863, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Accordingly, the town of Macon, the region’s largest city, in recent months has become a hub of hospitalized Confederate soldiers, their numbers growing daily.…
Mere weeks after U. S. President Abraham Lincoln offers amnesty to white Southerners who pledge loyalty to the United States and encourages Southern states to take steps to be readmitted to the Union, many Confederate citizens are seriously considering Lincoln’s offer. Lincoln is hopeful that his olive branch will quickly peel off Arkansas and Tennessee…
The war grinds on in the midst of winter, the cold largely confining the conflict to winter army camps, Union-held towns and cities, freedmen camps, war prisons,army hospitals, statehouses and courthouses, newspapers, street corner conversations, sermons, and sparse kitchen tables. Many white Baptists of the South keep abreast as best as they can of the…