A large crowd assembles in the Masonic Hall in Savannah, Georgia to hear the reading of an essay written by local hero and popular orator George Anderson Gordon, a colonel in the 63rd Georgia Regiment. Gordon’s regiment is charged with defending the Georgia and South Carolina coasts, whose waterways are now largely blockaded by the…
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…
As the year draws to a close following months of major Union victories on the battlefield, Peace Democrats–popularly known as “Copperheads” due to the pennies they wear as an identifying symbol, and characterized by their opposition to the war and demands for an immediate peace with the Confederate States–have lost their political momentum. Having reached…