As a matter of fact there was much in the argument of the church against Lorenzo Dow at this time.  The young preacher was not only ungraceful and ungracious in manner, but he had severe limitations in education and frequently assumed toward his elders an air needlessly arrogant and contemptuous.  On the other hand he must reasonably have been offended by the advice so frequently given him in gratuitous and patronizing fashion.  Soon after the last rebuff just recorded, however, he says, on going out on the Granville circuit, “The Lord gave me souls for my hire.”  Again making application to the Conference, he was admitted on trial for the first time in 1798 and sent to Canada to break fresh ground.  He was not satisfied with the unpromising field and wrote, “My mind was drawn to the water, and Ireland was on my mind.”  His great desire was to preach the gospel to the Roman Catholics beyond the sea.  Accordingly, on his twenty-second birthday, acting solely on his own resources, the venturesome evangelist embarked at Montreal for Dublin.  Here he had printed three thousand handbills to warn the people of the wrath to come.  He attracted some attention, but soon caught the smallpox and was forced to return home.  Back in America, he communicated to the Conference his desire to “travel the country at large.”  The church, not at all impressed in his favor by his going to Ireland on his own accord, would do nothing more than admit him to his old status of being on trial, with appointment to the Dutchess, Columbia, and Litchfield circuits.  Depressed, Dow gave up the work, and, desiring a warmer climate, he turned his face toward the South.  From this time forth, while he constantly exhibited a willingness to meet the church half way, he consistently acted with all possible independence, and the church as resolutely set its face against him.

Dow landed in Savannah in January, 1802.  This was his first visit to the region that was to mean so much to him and in whose history he himself was to play so interesting a role.  He walked on foot for hundreds of miles in Georgia and South Carolina, everywhere preaching the gospel to all classes alike.  Returning to the North, he found that once more he could not come to terms with his conference.  He went back to the South, going now by land for the first time.  He went as far as Mississippi, then the wild southwestern frontier, and penetrated far into the country of Indians and wolves.  Returning in 1804, he became one of the first evangelists to cultivate the camp-meeting as an institution in central Virginia.  Then he threw down the gauntlet to established Methodism, daring to speak in Baltimore while the General Conference of the church was in session there.  The church replied at once, the New York Conference passing a law definitely commanding its churches to shut their doors against him.