Southern Baptists examine role in slavery

Southerners still argue the cause of the Civil War on the 150th anniversary of its start.

Some call it the War of the Northern Aggression, a battle that pitted patriots defending states’ rights against a tyrannical federal government. Others blame economics — regional tensions between the industrialized North and the rural South.

But at the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives in downtown Nashville, what the Baptists of that era thought becomes clear.

The cause was slavery. They never even mentioned anything else.

Today, as Tennessee observes the war’s sesquicentennial, Southern Baptist historians hope to remind their fellow Baptists about why the war started and its long-term consequences on their Nashville-based denomination.
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