In Union-controlled Tennessee, formerly enslaved African Americans, many of them Baptist, are publicly expressing their sentiments to the state’s politicians, including Governor Andrew Johnson. African American attorney John Mercer Langston, born a slave, is one of the most prominent voices. On January 2, he addressed some 3,500 Unionists, 3,000 of them black, declaring that the…
On this second anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, freedmen North and South celebrate, praising God and giving thanks to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln for leading them out of captivity. For the Confederacy, the storyline of the war has turned into a nightmare. The Southern economy, resting on the free labor of slaves, is in tatters.…
Determination. Desperation. Defiance. The very moods that one might argue have emerged in succession during the course of the war on the part of the Confederacy are all evident this very day in the Battle of Nashville. Confederate General John Bell Hood, leading the Army of the Tennessee, has evidenced, against daunting odds, a heroic…