George M. Slaysman, pastor of First Baptist York, Pennsylvania, and his congregation earlier in the year allowed the Duquesne Grays Pennsylvania regiment to use church buildings as barracks as the soldiers trained in preparation for the battlefield. This month, as their time for deployment draws nigh, the soldiers move to newly-constructed barracks nearby. Upon completion…
Today Rev. Mark R. Watkinson, troubled by brother killing brother in the Civil War that has now continued for longer than many imagined, writes a letter to Salmon P. Chase. Watkinson is pastor of the The First Particular Baptist church of Ridleyville, Pennsylvania (later renamed Prospect Hill Baptist Church). Few outside of Pennsylvania have heard…
A newly-published apologist tract for slavery is circulating and making glad the hearts of white slaveholders in the South. Entitled, “Slavery Sanctioned by the Bible,” the booklet-length volume, written by a Baptist layman, surveys the presence of slavery in the Bible, then concludes: If our Southern slaveholders were all animated by this heavenly spirit of…