Many northern Christians, including many Baptists, are convinced of the righteousness of the Union cause: the unity of the American nation and freedom for African slaves. This certainty leads the Young Men’s Christian Association of Albany, New York to petition for a Battery Regiment. Today the Independent Battery, Flying Artillery is authorized, under the leadership…
Six months into the war, some Northern Baptist clergy are enlisting in the Union army – not as chaplains, but rather as soldiers. Memories of an earlier generation of Baptists fighting in the Revolutionary War resonate among Civil War-era Baptists. Among today’s enlistees is Daniel Haskell Burdick, Illinois Baptist minister and farmer. Burdick’s service is…
While the month of September is otherwise occupied with Baptist associational meetings throughout the Confederate States and United States, the stream of Baptists marching off to war continues. Many of the new soldiers will not return to their home churches. Among those marching off to war never to return is John Simms of Stamford, Connecticut.…