Under an oak tree in the southeastern Virginia town of Phoebus, a quiet revolution begins: Mary Smith Peak teaches the first classes to African American children on the grounds of present-day Hampton University. Born in Norfolk in 1823 to an Englishman and a free black woman, Mary Kelsey received a formal education then returned home…
Opining in this week’s Christian Index, Georgia Baptist editor Samuel Boykin, appropriating the language of providence, situates the Confederacy both under God’s control and as a part of God’s Kingdom. He also castigates the North for driving down the value of southern slaves and thwarting the Christian South’s efforts to save the souls of southern…
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…