Standing 6’2″, North Carolinian James Jenkins, 22 years of age, today musters into service with the 2nd North Carolina Colored Infantry at Portsmouth, Virginia. Jenkins is a free black, likely a mulatto. Service in the United States Army is important to the young man. After Private James Jenkins had gotten the brass letter, U.S., an…
Memphis has now been under Union control for over a year, the city serving as a strategic point on the Mississippi for the United States Army. From the beginning of the war Tennessee was a divided state, and the occupation of Memphis is welcomed by many residents of Union sentiment. This week the one remaining…
Each week during the war, editors of (white) Southern Baptist newspapers offer a potpourri of short pieces that collectively reveal their perspectives of the great conflict. By and large, these gatekeepers of denominational news are ardent supporters of the Confederacy, albeit the nuances of their shared nationalism (like that of the white South at large)…