s to guard against such accidents.

It was likewise stipulated that there should be complete religious
freedom and toleration for all sects. This seems natural enough now, but
in the eighteenth century the precedents were the other way. Kentucky
showed its essentially American character in nothing more than the
diversity of religious belief among the settlers from the very start.
They came almost entirely from the backwoods mountaineers of Virginia,
Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, among whom the predominant faith had
been Presbyterianism; but from the beginning they were occasionally
visited by Baptist preachers,[24] whose creed spread to the borders
sooner than Methodism; and among the original settlers of Harrodsburg
were some Catholic Marylanders.[25] The first service ever held in
Kentucky was by a clergyman of the Church of England, soon after
Henderson's arrival; but this was merely owing to the presence of
Henderson himself, who, it must be remembered, was not in the least a
backwoods product. He stood completely isolated from the other
immigrants during his brief existence as a pioneer, and had his real
relationship with the old English founders of the proprietary colonies,
and with the more modern American land speculators, whose schemes are so
often mentioned during the last half of the eighteenth century.
Episcopacy was an exotic in the backwoods; it did not take real root in
Kentucky till long after that commonwealth had emerged from the pioneer
stage.

When the Transylvanian Legislature dissolved, never to meet again,
Henderson had nearly finished playing his short but important part in
the founding of Kentucky. He was a man of the seacoast regions, who had
little in common with the backwoodsmen by whom he was surrounded; he
came from a comparatively old and sober community, and he could not
grapple with his new associates; in his journal he alludes to them as a
set of scoundrels who scarcely believed in God or feared the devil. A
British friend[26] of his, who at this time visited the settlement, also
described the pioneers as being a lawless, narrow-minded, unpolished,
and utterly insubordinate set, impatient of all restraint, and relying
in every difficulty upon their individual might; though he grudgingly
admitted that they were frank, hospitable, energetic, daring, and
possessed of much common-sense. Of course it was hopeless to expect that
such bold spirits, as they conquered the wilderness, would