Today James B. Taylor, influential Virginia Baptist minister who is serving as pastor of Richmond’s Grace Street Baptist Church, opens the Virginia House of Delegates with prayer. A large portion of today’s business relates to the problem of alcohol within the Confederacy. An 1863 bill limits the use of grains for distillation into alcohol, yet…
In a winter of discontent, deserters and dissenters are fair game in the Confederacy. From Texas to the Eastern seaboard, white southerners with wavering loyalties are caught in a tug of war playing out between lowered Confederate rifle barrels and the extended hand of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. In the crossfire hangs liberty, property and…
Since the Union capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi this past summer, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman has focused his attention eastward to Meridian, another strategic town in Mississippi. Slowly but surely and through a veil of feints and unusual maneuvers, Sherman has confused Confederate defenses in the ensuing months. Today the Union general and his army finally…