Muscular Christianity was personified in the circuit-rider, who,
with his saddle-bags and Bible, threaded the dreary trails through
the forest from settlement to settlement. From the responsiveness of
the west to religious excitement, it was easy to perceive that here
was a region capable of being swayed in large masses by enthusiasm.
These traits of the camp-meeting were manifested later in political
campaigns.
Thus this society beyond the mountains, recruited from all the older
states and bound together by the Mississippi, constituted a region
swayed for the most part by common impulses. By the march of the
westerners away from their native states to the public domain of the
nation, and by their organization as territories of the United
States, they lost that state particularism which distinguished many
of the old commonwealths of the coast. The section was nationalistic
and democratic to the core. The west admired the self-made man and
was ready to follow its hero with the enthusiasm of a section more
responsive to personality than to the programmes of trained
statesmen.
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