As the Confederacy’s largest city — New Orleans — is surrounded by the Union Navy, to the East the annual meeting of the Georgia Baptist Convention convenes at the First Baptist Church of LaGrange. The travails of the war are evident from the opening session, as both the appointed preacher, and the alternative, for the…
This month one of the leading Baptists of the South forms a Confederate company in Athens, Georgia: The Mell Rifles, Co. D, Cobb’s Legion Infantry, was raised in Athens, GA, in July 1861, by Patrick Hues Mell, Baptist Minister and Vice Chancellor of the University of Georgia. After Mell resigned due to his wife’s death,…
Robert Benjamin Headden (born 1838 in Cassville, Georgia into an Old Line English Baptist family), of Bartow County, Georgia, enlists with Philip’s Legion today. His first major action is in 1862 in the Seven Days Battle and the 2nd Battle of Manassas, at which he is wounded. Recovering, Headden fights in the battle of Fredericksburg…