This month one of the leading Baptists of the South forms a Confederate company in Athens, Georgia: The Mell Rifles, Co. D, Cobb’s Legion Infantry, was raised in Athens, GA, in July 1861, by Patrick Hues Mell, Baptist Minister and Vice Chancellor of the University of Georgia. After Mell resigned due to his wife’s death,…
In a war fought over southern slavery, the “peculiar institution” is not absent from Union soil. Maryland, a border state, is yet home to many African slaves. At the present, however, Maryland slaveholders are none too happy. Well aware that the war is a referendum on the future of slavery – although officially U.S. President…
Landrum C. Ezell (born May 16, 1843) of Spartanburg, South Carolina, enlists in the Cowpens Guards, 9th S.C. Regiment. Ezell is a Baptist preacher, and in the coming months and years he rises to the rank of sergeant, experiences minor war wounds, and fights in the battles of Williamsburg, Seven Pines, Gaines’ Mill, Frazer’s Farm,…