The war time years temporarily alter the trajectory of the Baptist press. The Baptist press of the South, represented by state and regional newspapers, routinely report on war-related news from other states within the Confederacy. Prior to and after the war, this seeming fascination with tidbits of secular news from the Confederacy is unmatched. A…
Tennessee is home to many poor white Baptists, as Tennessee Baptist editor J. R. Graves is well aware. Acknowledging the circumstances of his readers, Graves often during the war years publishes, or re-publishes from other sources, advice on how to cope with hard times. U. S. blockades on southern trade routes portend a coming year…
Eight months into the war, as the year draws to a close, southerners are concerned about the economic prospects of the Confederacy, now isolated from the manufacturing muscle of the North. Slavery remains the economic underpinning of the South, but the region’s reliance on cotton, enabled by slave labor, is now suffering from an inability…