Today’s Richmond Times Dispatch reports:
Rev. L. W. Allen, a Baptist clergyman from Caroline county, passed through this city a few days since en route for Kentucky, to raise a regiment with which to fight the Yankee invaders. Rev. Mr. Allen has until recently been the pastor of one of the largest churches in Louisville, Ky., and has many friends there and in other portions of the State. We record with pleasure every such accession to the Southern cause in that most unfortunate State.
Allen is a fervent supporter of the Confederacy. In May, he had been one of eleven members comprising the Southern Baptist Convention’s committee on the “State of the Country.” The committee led Southern Baptists in pledging loyalty to the Confederacy and launching a convention-wide emphasis on Christian nationalism.
Currently, Allen is corresponding secretary of the Baptist Bible Board, an organization now scrambling to produce enough Bibles to supply the needs of Confederate soldiers.
The results of the reverend’s attempt to raise a Confederate regiment in Kentucky are unknown.
Sources: Richmond Times Dispatch, October 22, 1861 (link); Minutes, SBC Convention, 1861; William Cathcart, The Baptist Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, p. 1085 (link)
