n together are in a
large majority in every State except Delaware, Maryland, and Louisiana.
Presbyterians and Episcopalians are well distributed throughout the whole
section and have exercised an influence altogether out of proportion to
their numbers. Presbyterianism came in with the great Scotch-Irish
migration of the eighteenth century, and though many of the blood have gone
over to other denominations, the influence of the Shorter Catechism still
persists. In the older States attempts were made to establish the Anglican
Church in the colonial era, and the governing classes were naturally
affiliated with it.

Both these organizations had to give way to the great wave of religious
enthusiasm which swept the section early in the nineteenth century.
Baptist and Methodist missionaries, many of them unlettered but vigorous
and powerful, went into the remotest districts and swept the population
into their communions. They preached a narrow, strait-laced, Old
Testament religion, but it went deep. They believed in the verbal
inspiration of the Bible, and so far as they could they interpreted it
literally, laying emphasis upon the future, the rewards of the
righteous, and the tortures of the damned. Life upon this earth was
regarded as simply a preparation for the life to come. One is sometimes
tempted to believe that these spiritual guides deprecated attempts to
improve conditions here on earth lest men should grow to think less of a
future abode. It is easy to understand why such a doctrine of future
reward should have appealed to negroes, and it is perhaps not surprising
that the poor upon the frontier likewise found comfort and solace in it.
ears ago the social position of the great majority of the Methodists and
Baptists was distinctly below that of the Episcopalians and Presbyterians.
In recent years many Methodists and Baptists have grown prosperous.
Instead of being bare barns, their church edifices are often the most
ornate and costly in the town or city. A Methodist or a Baptist can have
none of the former feeling of martyrdom now, when in numbers and wealth his
denomination is so powerful.[1]

[Footnote 1: Except these five, other church organizations have few
members. There are a few Congregationalists, almost entirely the result
of post-bellum missions to the negroes. White and negro Lutheran
churches are scattered through the Southern States, and in Kentucky and
Tennessee the Disciples are important. Here and