Baptists and the American Civil War (A New Website)

[Bruce Gourley]

I'm introducing a new website just in time for the New Year:



As you know, 2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War. This site coincides with the anniversary. I still have some design tweaking to do, but it is up and running, and this is the first announcement about it.

[Haruo]

Looks like fun. But when I clicked on This Day in History nothing happened. If I went in via months I could see some day-by-day posts, but not when I tried to access that feature directly.

[David Flick]

.
.What an interesting site! I spent better than an hour browsing several links and looked at many photographs. Very interesting...

Bruce, are you going to publish your dissertation, which as I recall, was about Baptists and the Civil War. I'd love have an opportunity to read it...
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[Bruce Gourley]

[Bruce Gourley]

[Tim Bonney]

Excellent website Bruce! Both the design and the content are stellar.

[Gene Scarborough]

I pastored the Noonday Baptist Churh in the 1980's. It's minutes had been laminated and bound by the Georgia Archives and are present at the church for anyone wanting to drop by and have a look. The church is just south of Woodstock on GA9 which runs on up to Jasper from Marietta and downtown Atlanta.

This church also has the old cemetary hidden in the trees on the left of Hwy 9 about a quarter mile north. A road coming in from the right as you are going north is the general location and it is difficult to see in the woods. I would assume it will not be disturbed by development.

This cemetary has a mix of white and black graves. The white ones usually have a headstone with interesting stories to tell. The black graves are marked by rocks and have no other things to say except "blacks belonged alongside their white masters to the same church and graveyard."

The Battle of Noonday Creek was fought there and the old church wood frame sanctuary was used for a field hospital. I found a letter between 2 sisters where one asks, "Do you remember the old sanctuary with the cannonball holes in the west wall and blood stains on the floor?"

I'll tell your more later.

[Bruce Gourley]

[ET]

Great site, Bruce! Thanks for putting it together! The author of "Chaplain of the Confederacy" will most likely benefit from your reference on the site at some point in the future. I definitely want to pick up a copy of that one and read it.

[Mrs Haruo]

This is very interesting. I don't know much about my own ancestor's involvement in the Civil War, there is a notation in my grandmother's bible about someone dying of "Civil War Fever"--She was born in Nebraska 1887 and moved to Idaho in the early 1900's. Out here on the west coast, it was considered something long ago and far away. I have never sensed the feeling among "old timers" here that it was still being fought that I got when I lived in the south.

[Gene Scarborough]

More about Noonday:

There was no formal justice system in frontier days so the churches assumed that responsibility. They did it by subjecting members to church discipline. If a memeber was "in good standing" it was assumed he was honorable. Each month the minutes recorded activities in this area.

The practice was to bring charges at the Conference and require the member to answer them in front of everybody. Then a vote was taken whether to exlude the member or not. Anyone reading the accounts quickly discovers the same kinds of favoritism before the Court there as now. Certain people seemed to be brought before the Conference on petty things. They would get expelled and later restored.

A most interesting charge for one man was "possessing pigs not his own" as an example. Another accusation was that a member had lost his faith. Research on one such charge against a lady showed she was not there to defend herself, so a committe of 3 men was appointed to bring back a report. It was the standard procedure.

They did so next month saying, "She has, indeed, lost her faith---she has become a Methodist!!! This at the time Lottie Moon, cooperating with Methodist MIssionaries, adopted their request for support, but changed the time to Christmas when she thought people might be more in a giving mood! So much for interdenominational respect.

[Stephen Fox]

I hope Gourley will unflinchingly look at Hannah Rosen's bigger picture here as he inflects the Baptist part of the Civil War.

http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_det ... le_id=1018

He and Baptist Historians could use the inflection of E. L. Doctorow's Sherman's March and the story of the GA SBC President who fought lynchin in the early 1900's to poor results. Story is told in the must volume for Gourley's Library Jumpn Jim Crow, by Dailey Bryant Et. al.

With Gourley networking to key forces in the Baptist Covenant movement he should also be aware of the Godbold biography of Jimmy Carter's run for Ga Governor and how Carter played the Wallace and Maddox Dixiecrat card.

Will be looking for his two page analysis in Baps Today, maybe focussing on Baxter Wynn's story as nephew of Maddox in an upcoming issue.

[RyanHale]

Now dat's kewl. Good job, Bruce.

[Mrs Haruo]

Oh dear, Oh dear, I have been tutoring at a Methodist church in the neighborhood. Is that a faithless thing to do????? Or does my being a "**** Yankee" excuse me??????

Now back to our regularly scheduled thread. I'm looking forward to reading more, Bruce!!!

[Dave Roberts]

Church discipline in the 19th century era was interesting. When I served a church in Fayetteville, NC, that was founded in the 1850's, it was interesting to read the old minutes. The first was a church trial for a woman described as having a "disorderly walk." She plead guilty and asked for restoration. I've always wondered what a disorderly walk was. In the 1890's, they had a trial for a woman who was known to have gone to a dance. She was found guilty, said she would certainly do it again, and was immediately "churched." I think that family moved to the Methodist church as well.

[Gene Scarborough]

Mrs. Haruo---Us sons of the south will forgive you for being a "**** yankee"--and 'sosiating with Methodists!!! Yew jest caint hep it!!!

We got our tails whipped in the end, but we scared them to death when we almost took Washington at the beginning. If we had the industrial might of the North and the immigrant cannon fodder to eat up all the ammunation it would be the Conferderate States of America on the Southeastern US map today.

The difference between a Yankee and a "**** yankee" is the latter decides to stay here and never admit our climate in winter is much better---and northern summers have the same blamed humidity as the South. That's why all the largest growth in the last 40 years has been "down south."

Sadly, Republicans have found us too! Know the difference between a Democrat and Republican anyway???

Answer: A republican is just a Democrat who has made so much money he wants to keep it all!!!

I'll do Noonday another day because this was too much fun to miss---sorry for the diversion!

[Mrs Haruo]

Well thank ya Brother Gene!! I must be a Yankee then, just a wild woman out heyar in Washington Territory. I spent November and December 1972 in Orlando, Florida in a bizarre ritual known as the Navy Recruit Center for Women, and other than a carefully chaperoned Saturday aftenoon marching in a Christmas Parade in a brand new uniform, and one day at the brand new Disney World, and promised myself I would never go back there again. I spent from the beginning of January, 1973 to the middle of August of that year at Pensacola, Florida. I decided after swapping orders to get back out to at least the same time zone as Washington State, that while an interesting place to visit, I did NOT want to spend more time in the South at that time. I did not like the heat, the humidity, the mildew in the shower stalls or poisonous snakes out in the boonies where I wanted to wander in absent minded musings and longed for the mild climate and greater tolerance for diversity and wildly eccentric independent minded women like myself on the west coast, where I resided for 20 years amidst the assorted fruits and nuts and sub-tropical flowers of Santa Clara California. I am finally back home in my beloved Seattle-- the "Other" Washington to East Coasters. Dixie is safe from my disordered walk (one leg is shorter than the other) and my dislike of long, full, poofy skirts and debutante cotillions. Now that I have a decent husband to defend my honor and and ward off carpetbaggers, I think it might be safe to return for a visit some day and go up river for some good gator hunting or a nice sweet potato pie.

[Gene Scarborough]

Mrs Haruo---I like your style. Although you don't like the mildew and snakes, you would fit right in!!!

You have the innate abilility of a Southern Bell to take men to their knees with "Honeychile let me tell your a thing or two sweetheart......" which totally disarms anyone!!! Clorox on mildew takes care of it / knowing the sound of a rattle snake or alligator grunt in a lagoon / and being able to recornize poison oak by its color and leaf shape will get you by. You can't do much about the heat and humidity and it is certainly NOT a problem in Seattle down to San Francisco! My Coast Guard Aviation son is now freezing at a remote base south of Portland, OR!

Sam Clemmons put it best: "I spent the coldest winter of my life one summer in San Francisco." I have visited the area twice. The first time they were closing building downtown with temperatures in the 80's!!! No A-C is even available in such, as they draw outside air in to keep the buildings cool and comfy. My wife and I were laughing ourselves to death after being in Las Vegas and coming from SC. In Minneapolis in August as I worked for Ministers Life, the "fools" were running around in shorts as I was pulling on my jacket to keep warm. Southern blood is just thinned up to handle the heat of summer!

Speaking of Southern ladies, I think you will like this link to a good Southern Baptist Southern Belle from Alabama speaking her mind:

[Gene Scarborough]

In the link a few posts above---go to the end on p.256 and look closely at the resolution passed in 1988 at San Antonio where they claim the "priesthood of the believer" is a modern myth of the SBC.

Beware of the Redaction of SBC History which has been taking place for the last 40 years to "prove" Conservative Resurgence is right and all the rest of us traditional Baptists are wrong.

We had better learn and know our real history more than ever before in SBC history. You can't trust the redactionists!!!

[Gene Scarborough]

Here's some more on Noonday Baptist Church:

During the years of the Civil War there was a break in the Minutes indicating things got so bad churches did not have time to meet monthly. Nothing shows the penetration into daily activities more than when it invades normal church activity.

Another event gave me some clarification on the effects on where people settled or moved.

I got a visit by some elderly folks who were tracing their family member in Texas who was Church Clerk at Noonday prior to the Civil War. They found him!

His story is of a person fleeing the devastated South. He left Noonday for Tyler, TX. He settled in a crossroad community outside of town and named it "Noonday!" Yes, there is a Noonday, TX, outside Tyler and it has a good size Baptist Church named the same which is going on today. It leads me to conclude many people left the South for the Midwest. I suspect that any town out there bearing a name from the Deep South can trace its history to the dispursion of the Civil War. We tend to think the westward settlement was just based on people wanting a new territory and opportunity. The additional driving force was War and its aftermath.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Gene Scarborough]

Ed---

It is most interesting how we try to view ourselves.

LIkely the mid-westerners in the early days wanted not to be viewed as "losers."

Now, good Yankees don't want to be called "Rebels" even though they have lived here 40 years!!!

[Ed Pettibone]

[Mrs Haruo]

I must admit, when I went into the chow hall at NAS Pensacola, those southern boys sure treated my like a lady. That's one thing I DID like about the South, Thats why we moved to the Southern borders of Seattle, where there are lots of folks from Louisiana in the neighborhood. There's a civil war reenactment group that meets at Ft. Steilacoom near Tacoma every Memorial weekend and show up in full uniforms and gear to fight the same battles over again with dummy bullets. Now I get plenty of Southern Gospel music in the air on Sunday mornings, and views of Mt. Rainier if I walk to the other side of the hill when the fog clears. Now I'm gonna find me a recipe for sweet potato pie....

[Gene Scarborough]

That's what the Civil War was really about----Southern gentlemen tired of industrialists and immigrants keeping us poor with finished goods and paying us next to nothing for the raw materials. Us Southern Gentlemen can become junk yard dogs when pushed too far and insulted too much---with southern smile on face, of course!!!

Actually, a good slave was treated as a member of the family and treated with far greater respect than an Irish immegrant up North. And God help the soul if a black man went to the front door in Boston---as my father discovered while there for his Andover-Newton education.