Today Union General Ulysses S. Grant telegrams General William T. Sherman, in response to Sherman’s request to march from Atlanta to Savannah, destroying Confederate infrastructure and supplies along the way. “If you are satisfied the trip to the sea coast can be made holding the line of the Tennessee river firmly,” Grant tells Sherman, “you…
The Civil War has raised a host of issues for white Baptists of the South, a largely rural people who, echoing the early frontier ethos of their spiritual ancestors, frame religion as personal piety rather than social responsibility. Local church minutes of the 1850s and 1860s are often concerned with personal sins such as card…
As reported by today’s New York Times, Henry Ward Beecher has recently toured England, speaking about the American Civil War and the temperance movement. Invited to speak to Britain’s National Temperance League, his speech included a story about a Baptist church. This distinguished advocate of temperance and freedom [Beecher] having consented to meet the members…