, however, Dow
seems always to have found firm friends in the State of North Carolina. In
1818 a paper in Raleigh spoke of him as follows: "However his independent
way of thinking, and his unsparing candor of language may have offended
others, he has always been treated here with the respect due to his
disinterested exertions, and the strong powers of mind which his sermons
constantly exhibit."[2]

His hold upon the masses was remarkable. No preacher so well as he
understood the heart of the pioneer. In a day when the "jerks," and falling
and rolling on the ground, and dancing still accompanied religious emotion,
he still knew how to give to his hearers, whether bond or free, the
wholesome bread of life. Frequently he inspired an awe that was almost
superstitious and made numerous converts. Sometimes he would make
appointments a year beforehand and suddenly appear before a waiting
congregation like an apparition. At Montville, Connecticut, a thief had
stolen an axe. In the course of a sermon Dow said that the guilty man was
in the congregation and had a feather on his nose. At once the right man
was detected by his trying to brush away the feather. On another occasion
Dow denounced a rich man who had recently died. He was tried for slander
and imprisoned in the county jail. As soon as he was released he announced
that he would preach about "another rich man." Going into the pulpit at the
appointed time, he began to read: "And there was another rich man who died
and--." Here he stopped and after a breathless pause he said, "Brethren, I
shall not mention the place this rich man went to, for fear he has some
relatives in this congregation who will sue me." The effect was
irresistible; but Dow heightened it by taking another text, preaching a
most dignified sermon, and not again referring to the text on which he had
started.

Dow went again to England in 1818. He was not well received by the
Calvinists or the Methodists, and, of course, not by the Episcopalians; but
he found that his campmeeting idea had begun twelve years before a new
religious sect, that of the Primitive Methodists, commonly known as
"ranters." The society in 1818 was several thousand strong, and Dow visited
between thirty and forty of its chapels. Returning home, he resumed his
itineraries, going in 1827 as far west as Missouri. In thinking of this
man's work in the West we must keep constantly in mind, of course, the
great difference made by a hundred