Baptists and the American Civil War: In Their Own Words » Archives: This Day in Civil War History
Baptists and the American Civil War: May 18, 1862
Beaufort, South Carolina has now been under the control of occupying Union forces for six months. Union soldiers hold regular worship services in the local Baptist meeting house, where Rev. Brown, chaplain of the 76th New York (nicknamed the “Highlanders”) often preaches. The 100th Pennsylvania is also part of the occupying force, and today–Sunday–a soldier from that regiment describes the day’s happenings. Weather clear and cloudy alternately intensely hot when clear. I went to the Baptist … Read entire article »
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Baptists and the American Civil War: May 17, 1862
This month, Southern Baptist’s lone seminary closes its doors in response to war-time pressures. Commencement is canceled at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Greenville, South Carolina, as many students have already joined the Confederate Army. Seminary faculty in the weeks and months ahead engage the Southern war effort in various ways. President James P. Boyce (1827-1888) has been serving as a chaplain in the Confederate Army for a number of months. Upon the closure of … Read entire article »
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Baptists and the American Civil War: May 16, 1862
By proclamation of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, many Baptists and other Christians today (a Friday) gather in their houses of worship to offer special prayer for the Confederacy, a nation now reeling from Union advances in Virginia and the deep South. Davis’s proclamation is as follows: To the People of the Confederate States of America: an enemy, waging war in a manner violative of the usage of civilized nations, has invaded our country. With presumptuous reliance on … Read entire article »
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Baptists and the American Civil War: May 15, 1862
A recent letter from a North Carolina Baptist Confederate soldier is published in this week’s North Carolina Biblical Recorder. Writing from Gordonville, Virgina, the soldier (identifying himself only as D. W. C.) reflects upon his early weeks in the state where the Union is on the offensive. His observations include the adoration of Richmond women and the growing evidence of religion in the camps. Bro. Hufham:–As we have left Kinston, N.C., we feel much out of … Read entire article »
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Baptists and the American Civil War: May 14, 1862
White Baptist commitment to the Confederacy is similar to that of the South’s other Christian denominations: many if not most embrace (in some fashion or another) the Confederacy as God’s Kingdom on earth, while few publicly disagree with the belief that African slavery is God’s will for the black race. Calvinism, a long-held Christian belief system positing God’s complete sovereignty over history and humankind, is the theology that buttresses the divine status of the racially-driven … Read entire article »
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Baptists and the American Civil War: May 13, 1862
The Chowan Baptist Association of North Carolina assembles today for the organization’s annual meeting. Among business items, the report on the North Carolina Baptist State Convention is front and center, revealing insight into how Southern Baptists have reoriented their mission efforts in light of the Civil War. This Institution is designed to give strength and efficiency to our efforts in promoting the great objects of christian benevolence, connected with the advancement of our Redeemer’s kingdom in … Read entire article »
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Baptists and the American Civil War: May 12, 1862
Southern slave holders long ago staked out the public position that their African slaves are happy and fulfilled in their lives of bondage. Africans’ inherent intelligence, so the reasoning goes, is suitable–at its best– for a life of enslavement consisting of social and racial isolation, hard work, meager rations, primitive housing, no familial bonds, and severe punishment in instances of disobedience. Such is God’s revealed will for the black race. That slaves by the thousands … Read entire article »
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Baptists and the American Civil War: May 11, 1862
Union forces continue their march to Richmond. Norfolk is now occupied by Union troops, while the U.S. Navy searches for the Confederates’ flag ship ironclad, CSS Virginia. Boxed in and unable to make a run for freedom because of a low tide and unsuitable wind, the order is given to scuttle the Virginia. Early this morning, the ship is blasted to its death, the explosion being heard far and wide. Afterwards, some Union sailors collect … Read entire article »
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Baptists and the American Civil War: May 10, 1862
The city of Troy, New York, prior to the Civil War grew to become one of the 20th largest cities in America. Growth, however, came with consequences. Like many other cities of the early and mid-nineteenth century, the city of largely wooden buildings has by now experienced a series of increasingly destructive fires. Today, however, all previous fires pale by comparison to a monstrous inferno sparked by a locomotive crossing a covered wooden bridge near the … Read entire article »
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Baptists and the American Civil War: May 9, 1862
While the Confederate capital of Richmond is threatened by Union advances, the war in the Western theater is also going badly for the South. U.S. General Ulysses S. Grant, driving further southward, is now in Mississippi. The Confederates scramble to halt the Union advance, and today battle erupts in Farmington. Settled around the turn of the century, Baptists from the Carolinas, Georgia and Virginia had been disproportionately represented among the earliest arrivals. The Farmington Baptist Church … Read entire article »
Filed under: Archives: This Day in Civil War History
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Recommended Works
- A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South (Genovese)
- Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (Wilson)
- Broken Churches, Broken Nations: Denominational Schisms and the Coming of the Civil War (Goen)
- Chaplain to the Confederacy: Basil Manly
- Conditions of Antebellum Slavery (Essay)
- Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South (Gilpin Faust)
- God's Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Rable)
- Religion and the American Civil War (Historiography)
- Religion and the American Civil War (Miller, Stout, Reagan)
- Religion in the Civil War: The Northern Perspective (Moorhead)
- Southern Baptists and Blacks, 1845-1895
- The Civil War as Theological Crisis (Noll)
- When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, And the Causes of the Civil War (Daly)
Archival Collections
- American Baptist Historical Society Collection
- Conditions of Antebellum Slavery (Essay)
- Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South (Gilpin Faust)
- Georgia Baptist History Depository
- Samford University Special Collections (Alabama)
- South Carolina Baptist Historical Collections
- Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives
- Virginia Baptist Historical Society