f German separatists from Wuerttemberg, under
the leadership of Joseph Baumeler, landed at Philadelphia. Like the
English Pilgrims they sought freedom from religious persecution, but the
Plymouth which they founded was on a new frontier--at Zoar in the
wilderness of Ohio.

What particularly impressed every foreign traveler in America during
these years of transition and expansion was the incessant movement of
society. The earlier westward movement of population had never wholly
ceased, but it had been retarded by the war. The return of peace was
like the first warm days of spring. The roads leading West were fairly
inundated by a swelling stream of emigrants. An observer at the Genesee
turnpike noted a train of some twenty wagons and one hundred and sixteen
persons on their way to Indiana from a single town in Maine. A traveler
on his way from Nashville to Georgia, in January, 1817, met an
astonishing number of people from the Carolinas and Georgia who were
bound for the cotton lands of Alabama. He counted over two hundred
conveyances and three thousand people, driving herds of cattle and
droves of hogs before them. But the great highway to the West lay
through Pennsylvania. On the road from Chambersburg to Pittsburg,
Fearon, an intelligent and in such particulars a trustworthy English
traveler, counted one hundred and three stage-wagons, drawn by four and
six horses, proceeding from Philadelphia and Baltimore to Pittsburg, and
seventy-nine wagons bound in the opposite direction. "On the road,"
comments Fearon, "every emigrant tells you he is going to Ohio; when you
arrive in Ohio, its inhabitants are 'moving' to Missouri and Alabama;
thus it is that the point for final settlement is forever receding as
you advance, and thus it will hereafter proceed, and only be terminated
by that effectual barrier--the Pacific Ocean."

To this emigration all sections of the Union contributed. In the
back-country of New England--in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and
western Massachusetts--was a restive population little loved by the
governing class. President Timothy Dwight, of Yale College, described
these people as "impatient of the restraints of law, religion, and
morality," contentious, always complaining, and always indebted. They
were likely to be Baptists or Methodists, by persuasion, and Democrats
in politics. As small farmers their lot was a hard one. They needed only
the incentive of cheap lands in the West to sever the slen