Philadelphia During the Civil War
The Baptists of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania are doing their part to support the Union cause. As reported by today’s Philadelphia Inquirer:
COL. GREGORY’S REGIMENT of Ninety-first Pennsylvania Volunteers, now at Camp Chase, on the Darby road, have received orders to march, and will strike tents to-day, and leave for Washington this afternoon. The officers and men of Company K, on Saturday, received a supply of underclothing and other articles of apparel to protect them from inclement weather, donated by the Ladies’ Bible class of the North Broad Street Baptist Church.
. . . .
MEETING IN BEHALF OF SOLDIERS.–Last evening, the seventeenth meeting in behalf of the soldiers, held in this city, under the direction of the Young Men’s Christian Association, took place in the Rev. Dr. McDOWELL’S Church, Eleventh street, above Spring Garden, at which addresses were delivered by the Rev. B. GRIFFITHS, Secretary of the Baptist Publication Society; the Rev. JAMES M. CROWELL, Rev. J. A. BROWN, Chaplain of the Thomas A. Scott Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers; and Colonel E. M. GREGORY, of the Ninety-first Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers.
The American Baptist Publication Society, founded in 1824, was, until the war, heartily supported by Baptists North and South. Despite the regional hostilities underlying the war, the northern-based organization, in the post-war years, remains popular in the South for the remainder of the century, as Southern Baptists struggle to create an effective publications and education board.
Sources: Philadelphia Inquirer, January 20, 1862 (link); John N. Brown, History of the American Baptist Publication Society. Phil: American Baptist Publication Society, 1856 (link)
