Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 | Page 9

the vast western wilderness a
retreat, sufficiently alluring to draw them away from the land of their
nativity. We have many troubles even now; but we should have many
more, if this body of foresters had remained at home." [Footnote:
Dwight, Travels, II., 458-463.]

Perhaps the most striking feature of New England life was its
organization into communities. What impressed the traveler from other
sections or from the Old World was partly the small farms, divided into
petty fields by stone fences, but, above all, "the clustering of
habitations in villages instead of dispersing them at intervals of a mile
over the country." The spires of the white churches of separate hamlets
dotted the landscape. Simple comfort and thrift were characteristic of
the region. "Here," wrote a Virginia planter, traveling in New England
in the early thirties, "is not apparent a hundredth part of the abject
squalid poverty that our State presents." [Footnote: "Minor's Journal,"
in Atlantic Monthly, XXVI., 333.]
The morale of New England was distinctive. Puritanism had founded
the section, and two centuries of Calvinistic discipline had molded the
New England conscience. That serious self-consciousness, that
self-scrutiny, almost morbid at times, by which the Puritan tried to
solve the problem of his personal salvation, to determine whether he
was of the elect, [Footnote: Wendell, Cotton Mather, 6.] was
accompanied by an almost equal anxiety concerning the conduct of his
neighbors. The community life of New England emphasized this trait.
Tudor, who was not friendly to the ideals of the "land of steady habits,"
criticized "the narrowing influence of local policy," and lamented the
"sort of habitual, pervading police, made up of Calvinistic inquisition
and village scrutiny" in Connecticut. [Footnote: Tudor, Letters on the
Eastern States (ed. of 1821), 60.] Not to be one's brother's keeper and
not to assent to the dictates of community sentiment were indications of
moral laxity. This long training in theological inquiry, this continued
emphasis upon conduct, and this use of community sentiment as a
means of enforcing certain moral and political ideals, led the
New-Englander to war with opposing conceptions wherever he went.
A test of the ideals of New England is found in the attitude of those
who spread into new regions. The migrating Yankee was a reformer. A
considerable proportion of the New-Englanders who left the section
were "come-outers" in religion as in politics; many of the Vermonters
and the pioneers who went west were radicals. But the majority of these

dissenters from the established order carried with them a body of ideas
regarding conduct and a way of looking at the world that were deeply
influenced by their old Puritan training. If, indeed, they revolted from
the older type of Calvinism in the freer air of a new country, they were,
by this sudden release from restraint, likely to develop "isms" of their
own, which revealed the strong underlying forces of religious thinking.
Lacking the restraining influence of the old Congregational system,
some of them contented themselves with placing greater emphasis upon
emotional religion and eagerly embraced membership in churches like
the Baptist or Methodist, or accepted fellowship with Presbyterians and
welcomed the revival spirit of the western churches.
Others used their freedom to proclaim a new order of things in the
religious world. Most noteworthy was Mormonism, which was founded
by a migrating New England family and was announced and reached its
first success among the New-Englanders of New York and Ohio.
Antimasonry and spiritualism flourished in the Greater New England in
which these emancipated Puritans settled. Wherever the New-
Englander went he was a leader in reform, in temperance crusades, in
abolition of slavery, in Bible societies, in home missions, in the
evangelization of the west, in the promotion of schools, and in the
establishment of sectarian colleges.
Perhaps the most significant elements in the disintegration of the old
Congregationalism in New England itself, however, were furnished by
the Unitarians and the Universalists. For nearly a generation the liberal
movement in religion had been progressing. The Unitarian revolt, of
which Channing was the most important leader, laid its emphasis upon
conduct rather than upon a plan of salvation by atonement. In place of
original sin and total depravity, it came more and more to put stress
upon the fatherhood of God and the dignity of man. The new optimism
of this faith was carried in still another direction by the Universalist
movement, with its gospel of universal salvation.
The strength of the Unitarian movement was confined to a limited area
about Boston, but within its own sphere of influence it contested
successfully with the old Congregational power, captured Harvard

College, and caught the imaginations of large numbers of the best
educated and prosperous classes of the community. Attempting to
adjust themselves between the old order of things on the one side,