A correspondent from the Richmond Daily Dispatch offers personal observations of Baptist life in South Carolina:
Since my last I have been rambling a little more in the Palmetto State, and have spent a few days in Georgia, well deserving to be called the Empire State of the South.
I was delighted with Anderson and Greenville, in the upper part of South Carolina. They are truly towns of groves and flowers. The latter specially, commanding a view of the distant mountains, and with a river dashing over its rocky bed across the principal streets, struck me as unusually romantic in its situation. But Greenville is interesting to many of your readers as the seat of the recently established “Theological Seminary,” under the auspices of the Baptist denomination, of which Doctors Manly and Broadus, from Virginia, are Professors. This institution is not now in session, most of the former students being in one way or another connected with the army. Although an effort was made to induce Congress to except theological students from military service, I, as a friend of religion and of such seminaries, rejoice that such exemption was not granted. It would have put a premium on hypocrisy, and would have filled seminary halls with young men who would neither reflect credit on their Alma Mater nor do good to the cause of religion. But though the institution is not in session, the faculty are by no means idle. Dr. Boyce, the Chairman, has been serving in the Legislature and as Financial Agent of the Confederate Government. He is now importuned to serve in Congress. Dr. Manly has been spending his leisure in preparing juvenile text books specially for Sabbath Schools. Some of these will probably be shortly published by the Sunday School Board, lately created by the Southern Baptist Convention, and located in Greenville. Dr. Manly is President of this Board. Dr. John A. Broadus, Professor New Testament Interpretation and Homiletics, I am permitted to say, is devoting himself to the preparation of a Commentary on the New Testament, which, it is hoped, will supply a felt necessity in the Confederate States. This work, completed, need hardly be expected for several years, but when it does come, it will be likely by its intrinsic merit and adaptation to popular need to supercede similar productions from Yankee pens now in use. Many a soldier in the army of Northern Virginia will be pleased to hear that Dr. B. proposes to spend the summer as Army Evangelist in the employ of the Virginia Baptist Sunday School and Colportage Board.
Source: Miss Sutten, “A Trip South,” Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 19, 1863 (link)
