Today the first Convention of Colored Citizens of the State of Arkansas is gathered in Little Rock. Many Baptists are among those present. The purpose of the convention is to exert the rights of freedmen and ensure that white Southerners respect their freedom. The road thus far has been brutal, and a future of true…
In Virginia’s eastern panhandle Freewill Baptists, under the leadership of Rev. Nathan Cook Brackett, lead the way in helping establish Freedmen’s schools. A native of Maine and in the closing months an assistant field agent with the United States Christian Commission in Winchester, Virginia, Brackett following the conclusion of the war suggested that Freewill Baptists…
During the antebellum and Civil War years most, but not all, Southern Baptist ministers harbored loyalties for the Confederacy. Of those who were Unionists, sympathies with the Union remained buried, or at least subdued. James Ryland Kendrick is one such example. Born in Poultney, Virginia in 1821, he graduated from Hamilton Seminary (New York) and…