226 ANDREW JACKSON 



part, Puritan. There cannot be a greater error than 

 to speak of American Puritanism as peculiar to New 

 England. That which was peculiar to the New Eng- 

 land colonies was not the simple fact of Puritanism, 

 but the manner in which that Puritanism dominated 

 their social structure and determined their political 

 attitude. Their origin dates from the time when the 

 Puritan idea was seeking to incarnate itself in a theo- 

 cratic form of government. That is what has given 

 to New England its distinctive character. As for 

 Puritanism, regarded as an affair of temperament, 

 belief, and mental habit, it has always been widely 

 diffused throughout English-speaking America. There 

 was a rather strong infusion of it in Maryland, and a 

 very strong one in South Carolina ; and nowhere do 

 we find the Puritan spirit, with its virtues and its 

 faults, its intensity and its narrowness, more conspicu- 

 ously manifested than in those children of English 

 dissenters and Scottish covenanters and Huguenot 

 refugees that went forth from the Alleghanies to colo- 

 nize the Mississippi Valley. Originally their theology 

 was Calvinistic, but during the latter part of the eigh- 

 teenth century a great wave of Wesleyanism swept 

 over this part of the country, and Baptist preachers 

 also made many converts. 



Devout religious sentiment, in this pioneer society, 

 did not succeed in preventing a great deal of turbu- 

 lence ; and herein we find a contrast with early New 

 England, which iias in later times left its traces far and 

 wide upon the habits and manners of different parts 

 of the United States. Where the early settler of 

 Connecticut or Massachusetts would seek redress for 

 an injury by appealing to a court of justice, the early 



