Their social, religious, and political systems were such as naturally flourished in a country remarkable for its temper of rough and self-asserting equality.

Nevertheless the old Calvinistic spirit left a peculiar stamp on this wild border democracy.

More than any thing else, it gave the backwoodsmen their code of right and wrong.

Though they were a hard, narrow, dogged people, yet they intensely believed in their own standards and ideals.

Often warped and twisted, mentally and morally, by the strain of their existence, they at least always retained the fundamental virtues of hardihood and manliness.
Presbyterianism was not, however, destined even here to remain the leading frontier creed.