Missourian Franklin (“Frank”) James (brother to Jesse James) is the son of a now-deceased Baptist minister (Robert James, who assisted in the formation of William Jewel College) and a Sunday School teacher in his Baptist church. Enrolling in the Confederate Army early in the war, Frank soon returned home. When Union soldiers raided the family…
Independence Day celebrations return to a nation undivided. For white Southerners, many impoverished in the wake of their Confederacy’s defeat, the day is the darkest July 4th ever as free blacks and U.S. soldiers parade through Southern cities and the Emancipation Proclamation is read alongside the Declaration of Independence. Evidencing little to no regard for…
The Confederacy is losing the war, but the entire American nation is suffering. This week, long-time Kentucky Baptist layman and former state politician Leonard Stephens (illustration) writes his brother William (now living in Missouri), bewailing what the war has wrought in his home state. Stephens letter offers insight into race relations as the end of…