Trickery is ever afoot in the border states as Confederate and Union partisans vie for control of disputed territory. One of many Baptist families caught up in the conflict on a local level is the Smith family. Obediah, a native Kentuckian, is a Baptist pastor of the Missionary Baptist persuasion. A pioneering family of Missouri,…
The Civil War years are a time of story-telling, corporately and personally. Soldiers and civilians on both sides oftentimes pass along personal stories that reinforce sectional pride and prejudices. The truth of such stories typically cannot be qualified, yet the stories themselves convey truths that transcend questions of factual accuracy. One of the tens of…
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,…