By inheritance Dr. Froeligh was a strong, self-sufficient man. His education and life accentuated these traits. His intercourse during the impressionable years of youth with such masters as Schuneman, Romeyn and Livingston must have developed in him an aptitude to command. In scholarship he was in a narrow sense profound. His early possession of the seat of authority led to a certain dogmatism. He was pronounced hyper-Calvinist, and ever ready to defend his extreme views. The synods of the Church were in that day the great events of each year, not only for clergymen but laymen. In these Dr. Froeligh was ever the leading controversialist. Both tradition and records show that he was strenuous to harshness in manner, unyielding, and exacting in statement, and always ready to estrange a friend rather than bend in the least. Combined with these traits there was in him a vein of mysticism. He dreamed dreams and saw visions that were to him authoritative communications of the Most High. Naturally such a man gathered about him devoted and obedient followers, and at the same time offended and antagonized many. Religion and politics were then, far more than in our day, issues of intense personal moment to all thoughtful persons. Party spirit blazed fiercely in every community. In the memorable Presidential contest of 1800, when the Federalist party was defeated, Dr. Froeligh was an elector and voted for Jefferson. What this meant to most of the ministers and influential laymen of the Church, who were devoted to Hamilton, can be surmised. As years passed his character did not soften, nor could he accept defeat gracefully. Gradually, new and younger leaders in the Church came to the front. Men like Milldoler, Brownlee, Broadhead, and Fonda, whom he would not treat as his equals, paid him less and less deference. But his chief antipathy was his neighbor of Paramus, once his own scholar, Dr. Wilhelm Eltinge. They were men much alike in character, who invariably stood on opposite sides of every question.