The North Carolina port town of Wilmington, a quiet community of some 10,000 persons on the eve of the war, has been transformed into a center of “profiteering and money-laundering” that is a magnet for speculators, “rogues and desperadoes,” “crooks, confidence men, and prostitutes.” Many residents have fled from their homes to safer and more…
Today is the Sabbath, and James W. Stovall, an Alabama slave born in 1837–the son of a white slaveowner and his house mistress–secures permission to attend a Baptist church that is now located behind federal lines in Union-occupied Decatur (at the time known as Cater), Alabama. Stovall, years later and living in Winona, Illinois, describes…
While white Southerners carry on about the sins and evilness of the North, the Confederacy, albeit God’s chosen nation in the minds of many, is not without fault. An article in a Southern Baptist newspaper this week offers an analysis of the shortcomings of the South. Everybody is crying out against extortion, and every one…