Today the informal emancipation of southern slaves begins, in the form of the United States’ Act to Confiscate Property used for Insurrectionary Purposes. While not mentioning slavery specifically, the Act approved by the President and passed by the Congress gives Union armies the power to confiscate the property of southerners – including slaves, the most…
In the pages of the Tennessee Baptist, Baptist pastor A. C. Dayton offers a parable of a “patriotic, self-sacrificing Tennessee plantation mistress” (who were actually relatively few in Baptist congregations) and applies the story to churched women: We overheard a conversation some few weeks since, which threw light upon the character of our fair countrywomen.…
In the state where southern treason against the United States began, South Carolina’s Southern Baptists convene in Spartanburg for the second day of their annual meeting. Most white southerners, however, consider the rebellion not as treason, but rather as the proper response of slaveholding states to the perceived hostility of non-slaveholding states and northern…