The First Baptist Church of Nashville, Tennessee, has experienced ups and downs during the past four years. When Nashville came under Union occupation in 1862, the church’s pastor and other ministers in the city refused to take the oath of allegiance to the United States, and were accordingly arrested. For several months during the year…
Prior to the war St. Augustine, Florida, a heavily Catholic town named after the fourth century bishop, St. Augustine of Hippo, served as a slave trade center of the Southeast. Augustin Verot, Catholic vicar apostolic of Florida, was as passionate a defender of slavery as were Baptist leaders of the South. His January 4, 1861…
Tennessee businessman and Baptist layman Joseph Alexander Mabry, Jr. (1826-1882), takes the oath of allegiance to the United States of America. Born in Knox County to a political family, Mabry probably attended Holston Seminary, a Methodist institution, before becoming a land speculator in Knoxville in the early 1850s. Using his political connections, Mabry in 1858…