Emerging from the annual meeting of the Georgia Baptist Convention in Athens are hints that the war will severely disrupt Southern Baptist life and ministries, and an acknowledgment that Southern Baptists’ mission enterprise is dependent upon the profits of slave labor (illustrated is a common scene in Georgia during the Civil War years). The Committee…
Southern states are astir, forming militia regiments and seeking funding. Samuel Boykin, the editor of Georgia’s Baptist newspaper, The Christian Index, calls for “every freeman of Georgia” to “prepare to discharge his duty manfully.” Delegates to the Georgia Baptist Convention, convening today in Athens, talk excitedly about their new nation and the battlefield clashes certain…
A speech that Governor Joseph Brown of Georgia recently gave to military officers and soldiers in Macon is printed in today’s Southern Recorder newspaper. The Baptist politician’s words echo familiar southern secessionist themes, rallying white citizens to the defense of the South’s slave culture (“domestic affairs”), advocating freedom and equality only for whites, and invoking…