ithout dancing, although members of certain of the more
straitlaced religious sects already frowned upon the diversion.

Rough conditions of living made rough men, and we need not be surprised
by the testimony of English and American travelers, that the frontier
had more than its share of boisterous fun, rowdyism, lawlessness, and
crime. The taste for whiskey was universal, and large quantities were
manufactured in rude stills, not only for shipment down the Mississippi,
but for local consumption. Frequenters of the river-town taverns called
for their favorite brands--"Race Horse," "Moral Suasion," "Vox Populi,"
"Pig and Whistle," or "Split Ticket," as the case might be. But the
average frontiersman cared little for the niceties of color or flavor so
long as his liquor was cheap and produced the desired effect. Hard work
and a monotonous diet made him continually thirsty; and while ordinarily
he drank only water and milk at home, at the taverns and at social
gatherings he often succumbed to potations which left him in happy
drunken forgetfulness of daily hardships. House-raisings and weddings
often became orgies marked by quarreling and fighting and terminating in
brutal and bloody brawls. Foreign visitors to the back country were led
to comment frequently on the number of men who had lost an eye or an
ear, or had been otherwise maimed in these rough-and-tumble contests.

The great majority of the frontiersmen, however, were sober,
industrious, and law-abiding folk; and they were by no means beyond
the pale of religion. On account of the numbers of Scotch-Irish,
Presbyterianism was in earlier days the principal creed, although there
were many Catholics and adherents of the Reformed Dutch and German
churches, and even a few Episcopalians. About the beginning of the
nineteenth century sectarian ascendancy passed to the Methodists and
Baptists, whose ranks were rapidly recruited by means of one of the most
curious and characteristic of backwoods institutions, the camp-meeting
"revival." The years 1799 and 1800 brought the first of the several
great waves of religious excitement by which the West--especially Ohio,
Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee was periodically swept until within the
memory of men still living.

Camp-meetings were usually planned and managed by Methodist
circuit-riders or Baptist itinerant preachers, who hesitated not to
carry their work into the remotest and most dangerous parts of the
back country. Wh