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…
Although white Baptists of the Confederacy revile U.S. President Abraham Lincoln as (variously) the “black president,” an infidel, heretic, barbarian and an evil abolitionist (among other disparaging labels), and some Baptists of the North lament the President’s seeming lack of interest in religion, Lincoln maintains an open door in regards to ministers of the Gospel.…
The Civil War has raised racial tensions to new heights in the South and in some areas of the North. The number of openly racist Northerners is such that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is not assured of re-election in the coming 1864 election. Hoping to tip the presidential election away from Lincoln and force the…