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The Cherokee Baptist Convention
By J. R. Graves
Tennessee Baptist, 1859
      We had the pleasure to meet with this body on our return from Richmond. It embraces five associations in the north-western portion of the State of Georgia, and has a constituency of more than seventeen thousand Baptists, as we have been informed. We found the brethren warm-hearted and (blurred) Missionary Baptists - ready to give as well as talk, and act as well as pray. The chief educational interests of the Convention are the college for young gentlemen at Camville, and for young ladies at Cedar Town - both excellent institutions and deserving a large support.

      The Convention determined to take upon itself the entire support of a missionary among the Cherokee, and raised a large proportion of the needful amount on the spot. One of the associations in the body is already sustaining a native minister among the Indians.

      To further these and other interests, the brethren have determined to have, if possible, a Baptist paper of their own, to be published at some point in Chembee Georgia, and to be edited by one of their own number. Such a paper, if it can be sustained, may be the instrument of much good; and from what we know of those who have the subject in hand, there is no danger that it will not be a consistent and thorough Baptist paper. Great dissatisfaction has been felt there with the recent stance of the Christian Index; and not only there, but in many other portions of the State. It has ceased to reflect the opinions of a large body of the best brethren in Georgia.

      The new paper will probably have a large circulation in all parts of the State, unless the course of the Index should be materially damaged.

      One thing was particularly gratifying to us in this visit. The brethren were not content to recognize us in our official capacity, but the Convention, by a special vote, voted to receive Deacon A. B. Shankland and myself as messengers of the Spring Street [Baptist] Church of Nashville, Tenn. Their object, we suppose was to show all the world that although some might affect(?) to regard as excluded Baptists, yet they were ready with open arms to receive us as brethren in good standing. So will we be received ere long wherever the strange facts connected with our so-called exclusion are known and understood.

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[From Tennessee Baptist, 1859, June 4, p. 2, "Editorial Telegrams," by J. R. Graves. Transcribed and formatted by Jim Duvall.]



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