tended to keep alive the memory of Populism in Iowa. Former Populists are prone to associate that movement in a causal manner with the social and economic politics of later days. One old warhorse of Iowa writes that "the populist members of Congress were the school masters of the world" and that "after being drilled and educated in Populist schools even a republican may vote right some time. ''388 "General Weaver", says one who was closely associated with him, "inaugurated the movement for the recreating of social and industrial life in decenter forms. ''389 Achievements in the field of social legislation are listed and pointed to as the fulfillment of Populist demands. Connection is thus found not only with the work of Bryan, but with the Roosevelt and Wilson domestic program. Such claims, however, are discounted in conservative circles.

But Populism must at least be associated with prophecy. It foreshadowed a larger sphere of public control of economic activity. In Iowa the movement was, furthermore, a manifestation of the shifting from sectionalism toward class divisions in politics. Iowa was becoming more capitalistic, though remaining an agrarian section, and radical Populism could not here withstand the readjustment of agriculture to the disappearance of the frontier. Iowa agriculture was destined to improve its relative position through a reduction of the amount of empty space into which western agriculture might expand and through an increase in the markets for farm products. The Populist diagnosis of the conditions of the times failed to take full account of such tendencies. These phases of western development were, nevertheless, observed by non-Populists, who

388 Letter from Perry Engle of Newton to the writer, undated, 1924.

389 Evans's An Appreciation of General Weaver, clipping in the papers of H. C. Evans of Des Moines.

offered explanations that in fragmentary form anticipated or reinforced Professor F. J. Turner's general interpretation, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, which was given to historians in 1893.390 Iowa Populism was to no small degree produced and destroyed by different stages of the westward movement.

HERMAN CLARENCE NIXON

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY

NASHVILLE TENNESSEE

390 In Iowa the paper of George E. Roberts was particularly skillful in explaining the troubles of the farmers as due to the rapid westward agricultural expansion and as destined to change through an improved agriculture and the cessation of expansion into new lands. The Homestead Law, it observed, "invited all the world to come and get 160 acres,' the world and the railroads came, and prices went down. "Iowa farmers have suffered, they have been compelled to look elsewhere for paying prices. The dairy, good horses and good cattle have offered relief that many have accepted. The State is fairly over the effects of bringing so much new land under cultivation."- Fort Dodge Messenger (Weekly), May 18, 1893.

The Iowa Homestead had for some years been noting the growth of western range cattle competition and urging Iowa farmers to improve their breeds and methods. Not long after the appearance of Professor Turner's paper, this journal said: "Farming in the West has suffered beyond measure from the work of the soil robber. He has moved from the East to the West by renting and skinning the land, and then moved on to fairer fields and pastures new until there is no further West, and it is now a question whether this type of farmers will change their aims and become practical, improved farmers or whether they will eke out a miserable existence on their impoverished acres, sell them and go into some other business, or have them sold from under them under the red flag of the sheriff. . . . The time has gone by when farming can be done by pure strength and awkwardness."- The Iowa Homestead (Des Moines), November 9, 1894.

More extensive discussions of the influence of agricultural expansion and of the disappearance of the frontier are given in Davis's The Exhaustion of the Arable Lands in The Forum, Vol. IX, pp. 461-474 (1890); Wiman's The Farmer on Top in the North American Review, Vol. CLIII, pp. 13-22 (1891); and Harris's What the Government Is Doing for the Farmer in The Century Magazine (New Series), Vol. XXII, pp. 465–472 (1892).

DENMARK-AN EARLY STRONGHOLD

OF CONGREGATIONALISM

The Puritan stalks through many a page in the history of the United States. The exodus of the Puritans from Old England to New England was followed by migrations of Congregational pioneers to the States carved out of the Northwest Territory, to regions across the Mississippi River, and to the far West beyond the Rockies.1 Like his forerunner, the Puritan, the Congregationalist had a passion for the perfect state and this made him a force to reckon with in politics. He espoused the cause of the Indian and the slave;2 the temperance movement found in him an enthusiastic advocate; and none perhaps did more than he to blaze the way across the continent for free public education-primary, secondary, and collegiate. To him religion and education went hand in hand.

In the settlement of the Old Northwest, streams of immigrants from the New England, the middle, and the southern States mingled, often forming communities with "all sorts and conditions of men" and not a few "out of sorts". Often the middle and southern elements predominated. This was true in parts of Illinois and also in Iowa where the 1 Walker's A History of the Congregational Churches in the United States, pp. 370-392.

2 Abel's The History of Events Resulting in Indian Consolidation West of the Mississippi in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1906, Vol. I, p. 377; Magoun's Asa Turner and His Times, p. 230. Turner was an avowed advocate of abolition.

3 Mode's Source Book and Bibliographical Guide for American Church History, p. 424.

4 Cubberley's Public Education in the United States, pp. 72, 198.

New England element was numerically weak.5 Wherever it existed, however, it proved a leavening lump.

Puritanism, under its newer name of Congregationalism, marched westward from New England through New York, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois to Iowa, largely under the direction of missionary societies. Chief among these was the American Home Missionary Society created on May 10, 1826, on the basis of joint association among Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and a few members of the Dutch Reformed Church. One branch of the Presbyterians - the Old School-withdrew in 1837, but the New School Presbyterians continued their support until 1861, when the society became essentially Congregational.

The American Home Missionary Society aimed at the establishment of a pastor in every western community. For this purpose the society sent out missionaries usually young men who were graduates of eastern colleges and theological seminaries-paying their travelling expenses and their salaries until churches could be organized strong enough to stand on their own feet financially." The duties of the missionaries - so important in the spreading of New England ideas, as outlined in The Home Missionary of May, 1830-were preaching the gospel, organization of new churches, visitation of the sick, establishment and supervision of Sabbath and Bible schools, the holding of prayer meetings, and the promotion of education and temperance.8

5 Herriott's Did Emigrants from New England First Settle Iowa?, pp. 7, 10, 29, 30, 34, 35; see the maps in Mathews's The Expansion of New England.

• Walker's A History of the Congregational Churches in the United States, pp. 328, 329; see the maps in Mathews's The Expansion of New England.

7 Magoun's Asa Turner and His Times, pp. 83, 89; Mode's Source Book and Bibliographical Guide for American Church History, p. 432.

8 Mode's Source Book and Bibliographical Guide for American Church History, pp. 423, 424; Life and Labors of Rev. Reuben Gaylord, p. 92.

Congregationalism, in close association with Presbyterianism, had begun to take root in Illinois during the third decade of the nineteenth century. Both had been preceded by more emotional denominations, whose members, chiefly of southern origin, regarded the stately and learned Congregational ministers as too exotic for the raw western soil. Despite such prejudices there was a steady and promising growth of Congregational organizations in Illinois, due to a large extent to the heavy immigration to northern Illinois of New England people, rather than to accessions from other denominations. A much cherished Congregational ideal was realized in 1830, when the Congregational ministers in Illinois, aided by eastern friends, opened Illinois College at Jacksonville. One of the promoters and trustees of this college was Reverend Asa Turner, who more than any other one man deserves to be called the founder of Congregationalism in Iowa."

The formative period of the life of Asa Turner would make a fruitful subject for the student of American psychology, 10 since it throws a flood of light on Puritan personality in general and early Congregationalism in Illinois and Iowa in particular. The ancestral home of Asa Turner was in Templeton, Worcester County, Massachusetts, where he was born on June 11, 1799. Of his home training we may judge from the following quotation from his younger brother, Jonathan: "I never heard my father make any appeal to us on the personal ground that he was our father, 'Moses-fashion'; it was always on the higher ground, 'Christ-fashion; Jonathan, do you think that is right?'"'11 Like so many Congregationalists at the close of the eighteenth century, the Turner family had drifted into Uni

Magoun's Asa Turner and His Times, pp. 80, 81, 85, 98, 103, 104, 105. 10 O'Higgins and Reede's The American Mind in Action, pp. 1-49. 11 Magoun's Asa Turner and His Times, pp. 16, 21.