With Savannah safely in Union hands, a victorious General William T. Sherman telegrams U.S. President Abraham Lincoln with a simple message: “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.” The capture of the port city…
John R. Bowles, born June 13, 1826 in Lynchburg, Virginia, is a free black and a Baptist minister. As a young man, Bowles settled near Chillicothe in Ross County, Ohio, marrying Sarah Jane Bryant in 1848. There the couple grew their family, in addition to participating in the Underground Railroad. At thirty years of age,…
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln‘s program of Southern reconstruction occupies much of his time and thought. Announced on December 8, the now six-week-old effort has proven more successful than many Northerners had hoped, while causing consternation among the political and military leaders of a fraying Confederacy. At the heart of reconstruction is the eradication of slavery…