18. For JLW’s administrative work, see, for example, JLW to BVRJ, 23 December 1856, PHS; JLW to BVRJ, 31 December 1859, PHS; “Report of J. Leighton Wilson,” Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America [Old School], 1856, 851. For JLW’s travels, especially to visit the Indian Nations of the old Southwest, see DuBose, Memoirs, 241; and see, for example, “Indian Tribes,” Home and Foreign Record, October 1854, 303.
19. Quotation: J. Leighton Wilson, Western Africa: Its History, Condition, and Prospects (New York, 1856), iii.
20. Quotation: ibid., 208.
21. Quotation: ibid., iii.
22. Ibid., 505–507.
23. Quotations: ibid., 379–380.
24. For examples of expressed mutual affection between BVRJ and JLW, see BVRJ to JLW, 15 March 1856, PHS; BVRJ to JLW, 8 July 1859, PHS; BVRJ to JLW, 20 December 1859, PHS; JLW to BVRJ, 31 December 1859, PHS. For an example of a member of the James family staying, while on furlough, with the Wilsons, see JLW to BVRJ, 6 May 1857, PHS.
25. Quotation: BVRJ to JLW, 22 August 1859, PHS. For JLW assigning financial responsibility and administrative leadership to BVRJ, see JLW to BVRJ, 6 May 1857, PHS; “Liberia,” in “Twenty-Seventh Annual Report of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in America, New York, 1864,” CTS. See, as well, BVRJ to JLW, 20 December 1859, PHS. For the tensions surrounding the question of white missionaries in Liberia, see Susan Wilds McArver, “‘The Salvation of Souls’ and the ‘Salvation of the Republic of Liberia’: Denominational Conflict and Racial Diversity in Antebellum Presbyterian Foreign Missions,” in North American Foreign Missions, 1810–1914: Theology, Theory, and Policy, ed. Wilbert R. Shenk (Grand Rapids, MI, 2004), 133–160, esp. 144n24.
26. For Drayton’s background in Charleston, see Raymond Morris Bost, “The Reverend John Bachman and the Development of Southern Lutheranism” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1963), 290–403. For the 1857 war between Grebo and settlers and the destruction of Big Town, see Richard L. Hall, On Afric’s Shore: A History of Maryland in Liberia, 1834–1857 (Baltimore, 2003), 398–431; Jane Jackson Martin, “The Dual Legacy: Government Authority and Mission Influence Among the Glebo of Eastern Liberia, 1834–1910” (PhD diss., Boston University, 1968), 186–205.
27. Quotation: Martin, “The Dual Legacy,” 203–204.
28. BVRJ to JLW, 8 July 1859, PHS.
29. For list of letters written by WW to JLW, see “Appendix: Wrote,” following WWD, 18 January 1858, WHS.
30. For the close relationships between the missionaries on Corisco and at Baraka, see, for example, Cornelius DeHeer to JLW, 1 October 1856, PHS; JLW to Corisco Mission, 4 May 1860, PHS. For Cornelia DeHeer, see Cornelius DeHeer to JLW, 23 October 1857, PHS.
31. Quotation: “Journal of Mr. Bushnell,” Missionary Herald, January 1855, 38. For sickness and death among the missionaries, see G. W. Simpson to Walter Lowrie, 1 February 1851, PHS; “Gaboon,” Missionary Herald, January 1859, 3; “Annual Report,” Missionary Herald, May 1854, 129–130; “Gabon Mission,” Missionary Herald, January 1856, 2.
32. David E. Gardinier, “The Schools of the American Protestant Mission in Gabon (1842–1870),” Revue Française d’Histoire d’Outre-Mer 75, no. 2 (1988): 182; K. David Patterson, “The Vanishing Mpongwe: European Contact and Demographic Change in the Gabon River,” Journal of African History 16, no. 2 (1975): 232.
33. Quotation: WWD, 1 July 1849, WHS. See also WWD, 1 August 1858, WHS.
34. Quotation: WWD, 21 February 1857, WHS.
35. WWD, 3–6 December 1858, WHS. Cf. WWD, 22 December 1848, WHS.
Chapter Twenty-One: A Patriot’s Choice
1. Quotation: JLW to “Dear Sister,” 15 October 1850, SCL. Cf. JLW to JBW, 25 February 1843, CTS.
2. For examples of JLW’s travels to different parts of the country, see Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (MGAPCUS), 1854, 191, CTS; Home and Foreign Mission, January 1857, 13–19; JLW to BVRJ, 31 December 1859, PHS; Hampden C. DuBose, Memoirs of Rev. John Leighton Wilson, D.D., Missionary to Africa and Secretary of Foreign Missions (Richmond, VA, 1895), 248.
3. For the development of the concept of a “Second Middle Passage” and for its bitter details, see Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (Cambridge, MA, 2003), 161–244.
4. For the development of the proslavery argument, see Larry E. Tise, Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701–1840 (Athens, GA, 1987); Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview (New York, 2005); Lacy K. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South (Oxford, 2009), 481–563.
5. Quotation: JLW to JB, 1 September 1833, CTS. For examples of JLW’s letters, see “Mission to Western Africa,” Charleston Observer, 8 November 1834; “Cape Palmas,” Charleston Observer, 7 May 1836; “Letter of J. L. Wilson,” Charleston Observer, 5 August 1837; JLW to Elipha White, 8 July 1837, in “Fair Hope, Cape Palmas,” Charleston Observer, 21 October 1837; “Extracts from letters of Mr. Wilson, at Cape Palmas,” Charleston Observer, 8 September 1838. For the broader context for the attempted revival of the slave trade, see Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade (New York, 1997), 765–768.
6. Quotations: JLW, “The Foreign Slave Trade: Can It Be Revived Without Violating the Most Sacred Principles of Honor, Humanity, and Religion?” Southern Presbyterian Review 12 (1859): 491–512. Cf. John Adger, “Review of the Report to the Legislature of South Carolina on the Revival of the Slave Trade,” Southern Presbyterian Review 11 (1858): 100–154. See also Michael Robert Mounter, “Wanderer,” in The South Carolina Encyclopedia, ed. Walter Edgar (Columbia, SC, 2006), 1006.
7. JLW to RA, 9 December 1852, ABCFM. For a revealing analysis of the extent of white fears of freed black slaves living in the midst of a “white America,” see Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page, Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement (Columbia, MO, 2011). Cf. JLW to BVRJ, 31 December 1859, PHS.
8. Quotation: BVRJ to J. Amos, 7 November 1860, PHS. See also JLW to BVRJ, 31 December 1859, PHS.
9. Quotation: Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York, 2010), 144. See also Ernest Trice Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, vol. 1, 1607–1861 (Richmond, VA, 1963), 554.
10. Gertrude McLaurin Shaw, “Mt. Zion Presbyterian Church: 1809–1977” (n. d., n. p.), 19.
11. JLW to Charles Hodge, 19 December 1860, CTS.
12. Ibid.
13. Quotation: James M. McPherson, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (New York, 1990), 43–44.
14. Quotation: Benjamin Morgan Palmer, The Life and Letters of James Henley Thornwell (Richmond, VA, 1875), 607. Cf. Erskine Clarke, Our Southern Zion: Calvinism in the South Carolina Low Country (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1996), 200–207.
15. For Hodge’s place in US religious history, see Paul C. Gutjahr, Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy (New York, 2011).
16. Quotation: Charles Hodge, “The State of the Country,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 33, no. 1 (1861): 1–36.
17. Quotation: JLW to Charles Hodge, 19 December 1860, CTS.
18. Quotations: Charles Hodge to JLW, 20 December 1860, SCL.
19. Quotations: JLW to Charles Hodge, 22 December 1860, CTS.
20. Quotation: BVRJ to JLW, 9 April 1861, PHS. See also JLW to Corisco Mission, 31 December 1860, PHS; JLW to BVRJ, 1 February 1861, PHS; JLW to Corisco Mission, 1 March 1861, PHS. For the efforts to find some compromise between North and South, see Foner, The Fiery Trial, 144–165.
21. DuBose, Memoirs, 232–233. For the sale of their New York home, see “Indenture Between Harriet Hunter and J. Leighton Wilson,” recorded in Savannah, 18 July 1861, record 3 U, SCCC. The transaction in New York was witnessed by JLW’s colleague John Lowrie.
22. For Alexander Henry, see J. Mathew Gall-man, Ma
stering Wartime: A Social History of Philadelphia During the Civil War (Philadelphia, 2000).
23. Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, 1:563–564.
24. Quotation: Ibid., 564–566. The doctrine of the spirituality of the church was spelled out forcefully by the General Assembly in 1845. See MGAPCUS [Old School] (Philadelphia, 1845), 11–17.
25. For Hodge’s extended review and discussion of the assembly’s action, see Charles Hodge, “The General Assembly,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 33, no. 2 (1861): 542–568.
26. Quotation: MGAPCUS, 1861, 329–343.
27. Quotations: Walter Lowrie to BVRJ, 19 June 1861, PHS; BVRJ to Walter Lowrie, 27 August 1861, PHS.
28. Quotation: DuBose, Memoirs, 247.
29. Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, 1:566–567.
30. George Howe to Thomas Smyth, in Thomas Smyth, Autobiographical Notes, Letters and Reflections, ed. Louisa Cheves Stoney (Charleston, SC, 1914), 621; DuBose, Memoirs, 249–250.
31. For Southern interest in the annexation of Cuba, see Jonathan M. Hansen, Guantánamo: An American History (New York, 2011), 58–74. Cf. Michael O’Brien, Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810–1860 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004), 2–7.
32. Instead of arguing for any determinism at work on white Southerners, Michael O’Brien has argued vigorously that the “Old South had chosen its own way with clarity of mind” and had “even understood things about the intractability of the human condition.” See O’Brien, Conjectures of Order, 1199–1202.
33. Cf. Robert E. Lee’s decision when Virginia seceded: “I cannot raise my hand against my birthplace, my home, my children.” But note that some Southerners cast their lot with the Union. See James M. McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York, 1988), 281–282.
Chapter Twenty-Two: Civil War
1. Ernest Trice Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, vol. 2, 1861–1890 (Richmond, VA, 1973), 20–22.
2. Ibid.
3. Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America, 1861, 47–48.
4. Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, 2:13–35.
5. Quotation: Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America, 1861, 53.
6. Quotations: ibid., 55–60. The debate over slavery and the Bible has drawn considerable scholarly attention in recent years. For an important summary of the issues and scholarship, see Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), 31–50. For the debate itself, see David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (New York, 1975), 523–556; Stephen R. Haynes, Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (New York, 2002); Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview (Cambridge, UK, 2005), esp. 473–504.
7. Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, 2:20–23.
8. Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America, 1861, 15–17, 47–48; Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, 2:294–307.
9. For the history of the various battles, see McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York, 1988), passim. For Antietam and its consequences, see James M. McPherson, Cross Roads of Freedom: Antietam (New York, 2002), 138–156; Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York, 2010), 206–247.
10. J. E. Cousar, “Mt. Zion During the War Between the States,” in Mrs. Shaw, “Mt. Zion Presbyterian Church: 1809–1976” (n.p., 1976), 72–85. For an analysis of the ways in which Americans, North and South, confronted death during the Civil War and went about the horrendous task of burying the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who died in battles and hospitals, see Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York, 2008). For the issues of “Believing and Doubting” created by the death and suffering of the war, see ibid., 171–210.
11. Quotation: Hampden C. DuBose, Memoirs of Rev. John Leighton Wilson, D.D., Missionary to Africa and Secretary of Foreign Missions (Richmond, VA, 1895), 253–254. For JLW’s organization of chaplains, see Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, 2:40–51. For diseases faced by troops North and South, see McPherson, Cross Roads of Freedom, 487–488; Horace H. Cunningham, Doctors in Gray: The Confederate Medical Service (Baton Rouge, LA, 1958).
12. Cousar, “Mt. Zion,” 79.
13. Ibid.
14. Dubose, Memoirs, 104–105.
15. Stanley P. Hirshson, The White Tecumseh: A Biography of General William T. Sherman (New York, 1997), 213; “An Act to Incorporate the Calhoun and Rome Railroad Company,” 1859, GLD; “An Act to Incorporate the Alabama Planters Steamboat Company,” 1860, GLD; “Nicholas James Bayard,” in Robert Manson Myers, ed., The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War (New Haven, CT, 1972), 1462–1463.
16. Hirshson, The White Tecumseh, 241–264.
17. For the burning of Richmond-on-Ogeechee, see Carolyn Clay Swiggart, Shades of Gray: The Clay and McAllister Families of Bryan County, Georgia During the Plantation Years (ca. 1760–1888) (Darien, CT, 1999), 32. For the destruction in and around Darien, including at Fair Hope Plantation, see Buddy Sullivan, Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater: The Story of McIntosh County and Sapelo (Darien, GA, 2001), 289–293.
18. Quotations: Jacqueline Jones, Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War (New York, 2008), 207; Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York, 1979), 144; James M. Simms, The First Colored Baptist Church in North America (Philadelphia, 1888), 137. For the ways in which the coming of the Yankees was filled with religious meaning for many slaves, see Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long, 104–166.
19. Quotations: Hirshson, The White Tecumseh, 275, 277. For the controversy surrounding the burning of Columbia, see ibid., 280–286; Marion Brunson Lucas, Sherman and the Burning of Columbia (College Station, TX, 1976); John Hammond Moore, Columbia and Richland County: A South Carolina Community, 1740–1990 (Columbia, SC, 1993), 181–208.
20. Cousar, “Mt. Zion,” 82–85.
21. Quotations: BVRJ to Walter Lowrie, 30 September 1864, PHS.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Home Ground
1. For the massive movement of Freedpeople after the war, see Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York, 1979), 229–335.
2. Hampden C. DuBose, Memoirs of Rev. John Leighton Wilson, D.D., Missionary to Africa and Secretary of Foreign Missions (Richmond, VA, 1895), 256.
3. For the sale of the New York house, see “Indenture” between Harriet Hunter and J. Leighton Wilson, recorded in Savannah 18 July 1861, record 3 U, SCCC; “Indenture” between J. Leighton Wilson and Thomas Dowell, recorded in Savannah 23 September 1862, record 3 V, SCCC. For the purchase of Pine Grove house and adjacent land, see DuBose, Memoirs, 286; N. H. Anderson to Rev. J. L. Wilson, “Deed of Land,” 7 March 1867, SCSC.
4. For the immediate issues facing Freedpeople, see Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long, 222–229; David Blight, Race and Union: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA, 2001), 44–63. For African Americans’ desire for, and sense of entitlement to, land, see Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (Cambridge, MA, 2003), 127–154.
5. Jessie Wilson, US Census, 1870, Sumter, SC, ID M593 roll 1509, number 347; DuBose, Memoirs, 104–105.
6. Cf. Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet, 154–156. For these economic arrangements, especially in South Carolina, see Joel Williamson, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861–1877 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1965), 126–163. For a dispute between JLW and Julia English, a domestic servant under contract, over the charge of stealing, see DuBose, Memoirs, 290.
7. Quotation: JLW to RA, 23 January 1843, ABCFM and CTS. See also DuBose, Memoirs, 104.
8. For the use
of “Old Homestead,” see, for example, JLW to the “Venerable General Assembly,” 22 May 1886, in DuBose, Memoirs, 313.
9. Quotation: Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York, 2008), 192. For Southern whites’ sense of invincibility, see Jason Phillips, Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility (Athens, GA, 2007). For issues raised by the suffering and death of the war and by the Southern defeat, see Faust, This Republic of Suffering; cf. Walter Brueggemann, “Some Aspects of Theodicy in Old Testament Faith,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 26, no. 3 (1999): 253–268. For widely influential reflections on these questions, see two books by James McBride Dabbs: Who Speaks for the South? (New York, 1964), and Haunted by God (Atlanta, 1972). Dabbs lived on a plantation not far from Pine Grove and was an elder at the Salem Black River Presbyterian Church.
10. See “The Crisis over Providence,” in Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), 75–94; cf. Phillips, Diehard Rebels, esp. 187–189.
11. Quotations: John Adger, “Northern and Southern Views of the Province of the Church,” Southern Presbyterian Review 16 (March 1866), 384–411.
12. Cf. C. Vann Woodward, The Burden of Southern History (New York, 1961), esp. 3–25; James C. Cobb, A Way Down South: A History of Southern Identity (New York, 2005), 34–66.
13. DuBose, Memoirs, 288–290.
14. Ibid.
15. Quotation: ibid., 289.
16. Quotation: JLW to Col. Franklin Moses, 7 September 1865, CTS. For JLW’s evening classes for blacks, see DuBose, Memoirs, 291. For the disenfranchisement of African American Southerners, see Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York, 2008), esp. 102–104, 121–122, 139–140. For disenfranchisement in South Carolina, see Rod Andrew, Jr., Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior to Southern Redeemer (Columbia, SC, 2008), esp. 430–431, 455–456.
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