The new paradigm of Southern freedom poses a challenge for white citizens. Following two centuries of enslavement, blacks, now free, have little interest in maintaining close associations with whites. At the same time, a general lack of education, housing and jobs among freedmen ensures that relations with whites will have to continue, at least to…
The aptly-named Lafayette Church (1816-1907) is a Baptist minister who during the war pastored the First Baptist Church of Alma, Michigan, when not soldering. A captain in Company D, 26th Michigan Infantry during the war, he was commissioned unit chaplain on April 2, 1864. Today he musters out of military service at Alexandria, Virginia. While…
While men typically occupy the front lines of Civil War narratives, war-time hospitals created space for women to play significant roles. Millions of soldiers were injured during the war, with hundreds of thousands requiring hospitalization to various degrees. The sudden necessity of large volumes of nurses to work in the hundreds of temporary war-era hospitals…