The post-war exodus of former slaves from the South to the North is already in progress. They follow paths trod by hundreds of thousands who fled to freedom during the war. In Indiana, Evansville, just across the Ohio River from Kentucky, is a top destination for freedmen from the South. Today former slaves who have…
In Evansville, Indiana’s Baptist Lecture Room on Fifth Street and Chestnut Street, twenty-five Baptists gather this day to create a new black Baptist church, one of many formed this month in the wake of the end of the war. Most prominent of those present is Andrew L. Robinson, an antislavery attorney and Baptist layman. The…
Unbeknownst to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, a photograph of him taken this day on the balcony of the White House will prove to be his last. Soon, he will succumb to an assassin’s bullet. Far away in Florida, also this day, Confederate forces triumph in what will prove to be one of the South’s last…