Some Baptist churches North and South during the war hosted political meetings, discourses or politicized sermons. In the North, calls for freedom for all were typically voiced, while such meetings in white Baptist churches of the South insisted upon the maintenance of freedom for whites only. One church that hosted political meetings in the North…
Free Will Baptists, equating Christian faith with human freedom, and human freedom with God’s blessings upon the American nation, remain consistent abolitionists throughout the Civil War. The tide has not yet turned decisively for the Union, but Lincoln‘s Emancipation Proclamation at the beginning of the year has encouraged abolitionist Baptists that victory over the slave…
John A. Abbott, a Baptist from Dearborn, Indiana, at the age of 21 enlists in Company I, Thirteenth Indiana Infantry. His military service under Union Major General George B. McClelland takes him throughout the South, engaging in numerous battles large and small. Discharged from the army on June 1, 1864, Abbott soon re-enlists at Washington,…