Amidst the desolation and death of war, moments of beauty remain. Today, Benjamin Johnson Lang (1837-1909) makes his debut as a conductor in Boston with the city’s first performance with orchestra of Mendelssohn’s Die erste Walpurgisnacht. Lang is the organist of one of the most musically-talented Baptist congregations in America: the first Baptist Church of…
Fires burn brightly through the night, followed by a smoky sunrise over the town of Princeton, (present-day) West Virginia in Mercer County. (At the moment, West Virginia is in the process of official recognition as a state carved out of Virginia.) Princeton lies near the Virginia and Tennessee rail line, and is thus considered strategic…
During the war, many white Southerners repeatedly refer to the “Cause” of the South, a reference (sometimes blatant, and at other times thinly-veiled) to the preservation of African slavery, the economic and social foundation of the Confederacy. Many white Christians of the South insist that the Southern “Cause” is the will of God, a view…