The pioneers were religious, but not ecclesiastical. They lived in the open and looked upon the relations of man to nature with an open mind. To be sure their thoughts were more on "getting along" in this world than upon the "immortal crown" of the Puritan. And yet in the silent forest, in the broad prairie, in the deep blue sky, in the sentinels of the night, in the sunshine and in the storm, in the rosy dawn, in the golden sunset, and in the daily trials and battles of frontier life, they too must have seen and felt the Infinite. Nor is it a matter of surprise that the pioneers of Iowa possessed the elements of character above attributed to them. In the first place, only strong and independent souls ventured to the frontier. A weaker class could not have hoped to endure the toils, the labors, the pains, and withal the loneliness of pioneer life; for the hardest and at the same time the most significant battles of the 19th century were fought with axes and plows in the winning of the West. The frontier called for men with large capacity for adaptation--men with flexible and dynamic natures. Especially did it require men who could break with the past, forget traditions, and easily discard inherited political and social ideas. The key to the character of the pioneer is the law of the adaptation of life to environment. The pioneers of Iowa were what they were largely because the conditions of frontier life made them such. They were sincere because their environment called for an honest attitude. Having left the comforts of their old homes, traveled hundreds and thousands of miles, entered the wilderness, and endured the privations of the frontier, they were serious-minded. They came for a purpose and, therefore, were always _about_, doing something. Even to this day, their ideals of thrift and "push" and frugality pervade the Commonwealth. And so the strong external factors of the West brought into American civilization elements distinctively American--liberal ideas and democratic ideals. The broad rich prairies of Iowa and Illinois seem to have broadened men's views and fertilized their ideas. Said Stephen A. Douglas: "I found my mind liberalized and my opinions enlarged when I got out on these broad prairies, with only the heavens to bound my vision, instead of having them circumscribed by the narrow ridges that surrounded the valley [in Vermont] where I was born." Speaking to an Iowa audience, Governor Kirkwood once said: "We are rearing the typical Americans, the Western Yankee if you choose to call him so, the man of grit, the man of nerve, the man of broad and liberal views, the man of tolerance of opinion, the man of energy, the man who will some day dominate this empire of ours." How prophetic!