Samuel Pearce Richards (1824-1910) is a member of Atlanta’s Second Baptist Church and an Atlanta bookseller that, having “no ambition to acquire military renown and glory,” has managed to avoid service in the Confederate Army. The former Unionist maintains a home front diary during the war, and today, amidst noting family affairs, worries that he…
North Carolina Baptists’ Biblical Recorder editor J. D. Hufham this week evaluates the status of the war from a Southern Baptist perspective. He wrongly surmises that Union Gen. John Pope’s Army of Virginia, currently located near Manassas, will probably not be engaged by Confederate forces “for several weeks” (Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, leading a…
As dawn arrives, twenty-seven members of a Union cavalry unit, the U.S. Loudoun (Virginia) Rangers, are holed up inside the Waterford Baptist Church. The county of Loudoun is under Federal control, and local Union supporter Captain Samuel Means is in charge of the cavalrymen. The remainder of Means’ men are guarding the roads into town…