The world, indeed, seemed demented."* Whole
communities sometimes professed conversion; and it was considered
a particularly good day's work when notorious disbelievers or
wrong-doers--"hard bats," in the phraseology of the frontier--or
gangs of young rowdies whose only object in coming was to commit
acts of deviltry, succumbed to the peculiarly compelling
influences of the occasion.
* Hosmer, "Short History of the Mississippi Valley," p. 116.
In this sort of religion there was, of course, much wild
emotionalism and sheer hysteria; and there were always people to
whom it was repellent. Backsliders were numerous, and the person
who "fell from grace" was more than likely to revert to his
earlier wickedness in its grossest forms. None the less, in a
rough, unlearned, and materialistic society such spiritual
shakings-up were bound to yield much permanent good. Most western
people, at one time or another, came under the influence of the
Methodist and Baptist revivals; and from the men and women who
were drawn by them to a new and larger view of life were
recruited the hundreds of little congregations whose
meeting-houses in the course of time dotted the hills and plains
from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi.
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