Today Texas Baptist layman, lawyer and former slaveowner Jacob Eliot takes “the oath of allegiance to U.S. government.” Eliot, however, yet often refers to black individuals with the phrase, “belongs to.” Many other white Southerners also continue thinking of black persons as property, rather than free persons. In many instances, local Baptist church records employ…
Other than the first year of the war, the South Carolina coast remained under the control of Union Armies during the great conflict, driving white citizens off the large plantations that marked that part of the state. Tens of thousands of slaves fled to their freedom behind the protection of Union lines, where Northern Christians…
In South Caroline a new Baptist church is formed this day: the First Baptist Church of Inman (as it is later named). A season of revival following the war provides the impetus for the formation of the new congregation. A growing Temperance movement in Spartanburg County contributed to the revivalism. Historically, Baptists had not been…