In the 1790s, the religious spirit began to flood back in the United States by the start of the Second Great Awakening.
Religion flourished. The Second Great Awakening was essentially a frontier affair, carried out by traveling evangelists, who often held giant camp meetings. The first of these was at Cane Ridge, near Lexington, Kentucky, in 1801, which became the prototype for many more. It was organized by Barton Stone (1772-1844), a Maryland Presbyterian, who described in great detail the evangelical enthusiasm created by these open-air gatherings, where preachers whipped up the participants into frenzies of worship.
Religion not only gave meaning to their lives and was a consolation in distress, it was the only relief from the daily hardship of work.
By 1844 Methodists were the biggest church in United States. Next came the Baptists, radiating from Rhode Island and its great theological seminary, later Brown University (1764). Like most Calvinist sects, they split from time to time, generating such factions as Separatist and Hard-Shell Baptists, but they were enormously successful in the South and West. By 1850 they had penetrated every existing state and had a major theological college in almost all of them.
