These ministers belonged to different denominations, but all were sure of a hearing.  The backwoodsmen were forced by their surroundings to exercise a grudging charity towards the various forms of religious belief entertained among themselves—­though they hated and despised French and Spanish Catholics.  When off in the wilderness they were obliged to take a man for what he did, not for what he thought.  Of course there were instances to the contrary, and there is an amusing and authentic story of two hunters, living alone and far from any settlement, who quarrelled because one was a Catholic and the other a Protestant.  The seceder took up his abode in a hollow tree within speaking distance of his companion’s cabin.  Every day on arising they bade each other good-morning; but not another word passed between them for the many months during which they saw no other white face.[2] There was a single serious and important, albeit only partial, exception to this general rule of charity.  After the outbreak of the Revolution, the Kentuckians, in common with other backwoodsmen, grew to thoroughly dislike one religious body which they already distrusted; this was the Church of England, the Episcopal Church.  They long regarded it as merely the persecuting ecclesiastical arm of the British Government.  Such of them as had been brought up in any faith at all had for the most part originally professed some form of Calvinism; they had very probably learnt their letters from a primer which in one of its rude cuts represented John Rogers at the stake, surrounded by his wife and seven children, and in their after lives they were more familiar with the “Pilgrim’s Progress” than with any other book save the Bible; so that it was natural for them to distrust the successors of those who had persecuted Rogers and Bunyan.[3] Still, the border communities were, as times then went very tolerant in religious matters; and of course most of the men had no chance to display, or indeed to feel, sectarianism of any kind, for they had no issue to join, and rarely a church about which to rally.

By the time Kentucky was settled the Baptists had begun to make headway on the frontier, at the expense of the Presbyterians.  The rough democracy of the border welcomed a sect which was itself essentially democratic.  To many of the backwoodsmen’s prejudices, notably their sullen and narrow hostility towards all rank, whether or not based on merit and learning, the Baptists’ creed appealed strongly.  Where their preachers obtained foothold, it was made a matter of reproach to the Presbyterian clergymen that they had been educated in early life for the ministry as for a profession.  The love of liberty, and the defiant assertion of equality, so universal in the backwoods, and so excellent in themselves, sometimes took very warped and twisted forms, notably when they betrayed the backwoodsmen into the belief that the true democratic spirit forbade any exclusive and special training for the professions that produce soldiers, statesmen, or ministers.