A typical growth-point was Indianapolis. It was laid out in 1821. The next year it had one two-
story house. By 1823 it still had only ninety families but it had already acquired a newspaper, an
important engine of urban dynamics. By 1827 the population topped the 1,000 mark, and twenty-
one months later a visitor wrote: The place begins to look like a town-about 1,000 acres cut smooth, ten stores, six taverns, a court-house which cost $15,000, and many fine houses.' Elijah Miles, who moved to the Sangamon River country in 1823, left a record of how he founded Springfield. It was then only a stake in the ground. He marked out an 18-foot-square site for a store, went to St Louis to buy a 25-ton stock of goods, chartered a boat, shipped his stock to the mouth of the Sangamon, and then had his boat and goods towed upriver by five men with a 3oo- foot tow-rope. Leaving his goods on the riverside-As no one lived near, I had no fear of thieves'-
he walked 50 miles to Springfield, hired waggons and teams, and so got his stuff to the new
town,' where his store was the first to open. It was the only one in a district later divided into fourteen counties, soMany had to come more than 80 miles to trade.' Springfield grew up
around him. They built a jail for $85.75, marked out roads and electoral districts or 'precinks' as
they called them, and levied a tax on `horses, neat cattle, wheeled carriages, stock in trade and
distillery.' By 1824 the town had its own roads, juries, an orphanage, a constable, and a clerk.
The key figure in such developments was often the county clerk, who doubled as a
schoolteacher, being paid half in cash, half in kind.
Although churches were the first structures to go up in most townships, religion flourished
without them if necessary. The Second Great Awakening, which started in the 1790s, 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. Stone divided
their antics into what he called exercises.' Thus in theFalling Exercise,' The Subject would generally, with a piercing scream, fall like a log on the floor, earth or mud, and appear as dead.' InThe jerks,' when the head alone was affected, it would be jerked backwards and forwards, or from side to side, so quickly that the features of the face could not be distinguished. When the whole system was affected I have seen the person stand in one place, and jerk backwards and forwards in quick succession, their head nearly touching the floor behind and before.' Then there was theBarking Exercise'-'A Person affected by the jerks, especially in his head, would often
make a grunt or bark, if you please, from the suddenness of the jerk.' There was also the
Laughing Exercise ('loud, hearty laughter ... it excited laughter in no one else'), a Running
Exercise ('the subject running from fear'), a Dancing Exercise ('the smile of heaven shone on the
countenance of the subject'), and the Singing Exercise, the sounds issuing not from the mouth but
the body-'such music silenced every thing." These antics may make us laugh, but the fact is they
have set the pattern for one form of revivalism for 200 years and are repeated almost exactly by
congregations receiving the Toronto Blessing in the 1990s. And the frontier men and women of
Cane Ridge and other camp gatherings had some excuse for indulging in these religious
ecstasies: they had no other form of entertainment whatever. 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.
Lyman Beecher (1775-1863), a New Haven Presbyterian who went west and became president
of the Cincinnati Theological Seminary-among his other accomplishments was fathering thirteen