perhaps the last case of the kind in the
country. Prisons were now made clean and healthy, and the idea of
reforming the criminal instead of taking vengeance upon him was
spreading. Reformatories for children had been opened in New York,
Boston, and Philadelphia. There were institutions for homeless children,
for the sick poor, for the insane, and for other unfortunate classes.

By this time the Methodists and Baptists had become extremely strong in
numbers. In 1833 the Massachusetts constitution was altered, abolishing
obligatory contributions for the support of the ministry of the standing
order. Connecticut had made the same change fifteen years before, in its
constitution of 1818. In many localities the newer denominations,
hitherto sects, were more influential than the old one, and in this
abolition of ecclesiastical taxes they had with them Jews, atheists,
deists, agnostics, and heathen.

About 1825 began a period of peculiar religious enthusiasm. Missions to
the heathen were instituted. Revivals were numerous and often shook
whole neighborhoods for weeks and months. About this date Millerism
began to make converts. William Miller, from whom it took its name,
preached far and wide that the world would be destroyed in 1843,
securing multitudes of disciples, who clung to his general belief even
after his prophecy as to the specific date for the final catastrophe was
seen to have failed. Mormonism was also founded, in 1830, and the Book
of Mormon published by Joseph Smith. A church of this order, organized
this year at Manchester, N. Y., removed the next to Kirtland, O., and
thence to Independence, Mo. Driven from here by mob violence, they built
the town of Nauvoo, Ill. Meeting in this place too with what they
regarded persecution, several of their members being prosecuted for
polygamy, they were obliged to migrate to Salt Lake City, where,
however, they were not fully settled until 1848.

As part of the same general stir we may perhaps register the
anti-masonic movement. One William Morgan, a Mason residing in Western
New York, was reported about to expose in a publication the secrets of
that order. The Masons were desirous of preventing this and made several
forcible efforts to that end. Morgan was soon missing, and the exciting
assumption was almost universally made that the Masons had taken him
off. There was much evidence of this; but conviction was found
impossible because, as was alleged, judges, juries, a