It is true that it was the struggle of political parties for dominion, each seeking to incorporate its peculiar class of ideas and cast of policy into the corporate structure of the future State by controlling the Territorial election; yet the effect upon the social and domestic peculiarities of Missouri, as well as the peculiar institutions of the State, was marked and decided.
Missouri caught the reflex tide of population, and her fertile soil, mineral wealth and commercial advantages not only retained this reflex population, but supplied an effective appeal to thousands more from all parts of the country—North, East and South—until for a few years her population increased at the rate of nearly one hundred thousand per annum. And yet, in her extended area of territory, this immense influx was scarcely perceptible. Along her rivers and railroad lines her population thickened, and her great commercial centres felt the life and power of multiplied agencies and resources.
Either the rapid growth of cities, the stir and excitement of trade, the strife for fortune and fame, the magical charm of Western life, or something else peculiar to the climate, the country or the people, all of these distinct and opposing types of social life, began soon to lose their “type force” and blend into a conglomerate social mass, with fewer Northern, Eastern and Southern peculiarities than Western—a rather unique social formation, which the modern sociologists have not yet classified.
Few Southern men and Southern families long retained their purely Southern style of life, and few Eastern or Northern men and families long retained the social and domestic habits that were peculiar to the latitude from which they hailed. It is easy to see how the social life that derives its characteristics from such different and distant systems would be peculiar in itself and to itself.
People lose their social characteristics much sooner and more easily than they do their religious peculiarities. The former are based on education, taste, association and habit, the latter on principles vital and divine. As every national and social characteristic known to American society has become mixed and blended in Missouri, so every shade of religious thought and feeling, every form of religious doctrine and dogma, together with every type of ecclesiasticism known to modern American civilization, exists in the hearts and homes of Missouri—at least to some extent. Nearly every shade of religious belief has a representative in Missouri, and stands out more or less distinct upon the moral phases of society.
These do not blend. No moral alchemist can fuse the distinct religious peculiarities of a people. Men may relinquish their social and domestic characteristics because they are matters of taste or convenience; but to give up their distinctive religious characteristics is considered a sacrifice of principle and conscience.
Men do not struggle long to maintain and propagate that which was peculiar to their former social life, but will contend forever for that which is peculiarly distinctive in their religious belief. That which men hold lightly and esteem of little value to them elsewhere assumes an importance and a value in the West, and will not be surrendered tamely. Religious ideas which in Massachusetts and South Carolina existed in the mind crudely or loosely; exerting no influence upon the life, would in Missouri take a permanent shape, seek affinities, and ultimately grow into churches struggling for a place in the great moral agencies of the State. Men whose religious habits were scarcely formed, and whose lives had not assumed any positive ecclesiastical type in the older States, on coming to Missouri became positive, decided, unequivocal, sectarian partisans, and often uncharitable bigots. Men who would contend fairly for their distinctive tenets elsewhere contend fiercely here, and very few live long in this State without espousing, to some extent, the cause of some religious sect.
There are causes for this state of things. Society is, to a great extent, in a formative state. In very few places, if any, has society settled down into grooves, and channels, and circles, and social and church castes, as in the older States; and then society exists in a great variety of unassimilated elements, Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western; English, French, German, Scotch, Irish, with a hundred different shades of social and domestic life, which are too distinct to become homogeneous, and which seek in church creeds and church associations their social as, well as religious affinities.
The result is that, perhaps, no other State can furnish as great a variety of distinct sects, or denominations of Christians, with the religious population so liberally distributed amongst them. There may be more sects in States that have a much larger population, but in proportion to the population, no State has a greater variety of churches which accommodate such a diversity of belief, each of which has so large a hold upon the public mind.
It would, indeed, be anomalous if all of these sects could exist together in peace. Missouri can not claim such exceptional distinction. In, perhaps, no State or country has denominational contention and strife been more general and uncompromising.