The effects of the Emancipation Proclamation are rippling throughout the South and the North. In the Confederacy, slaves are escaping from their masters in ever greater numbers and many are now in Union Army uniforms, stationed in Union-controlled areas of the Southern Atlantic seaboard. For their part, slave masters and overseers are forced to keep…
While public opposition to the Confederacy from within Southern Baptist churches is rare, Northern Baptists are not nearly as unified regarding their views of the United States. Although seemingly most Baptists of the North are anti-slavery and support the Union cause, some Baptists openly support the peace movement in the North, an effort to put…
Of the hundreds of escaped slaves in South Carolina and Georgia fleeing to Union-controlled Port Royal Island, South Carolina, many are Baptists. While the stories are joyful in that freedom is obtained, there are often elements of hardship and sadness in the journey away from captivity, as U.S. Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, abolitionist and the…