By the time Kentucky was settled the Baptists had begun to make headway on the frontier, at the expense of the Presbyterians. The rough democracy of the border welcomed a sect which was itself essentially democratic. To many of the backwoodsmen's prejudices, notably their sullen and narrow hostility towards all rank, whether or not based on merit and learning, the Baptists' creed appealed strongly. Where their preachers obtained foothold, it was made a matter of reproach to the Presbyterian clergymen that they had been educated in early life for the ministry as for a profession. The love of liberty, and the defiant assertion of equality, so universal in the backwoods, and so excellent in themselves, sometimes took very warped and twisted forms, notably when they betrayed the backwoodsmen into the belief that the true democratic spirit forbade any exclusive and special training for the professions that produce soldiers, statesmen, or ministers. The fact that the Baptist preachers were men exactly similar to their fellows in all their habits of life, not only gave them a good standing at once, but likewise enabled them very early to visit the farthest settlements, travelling precisely like other backwoodsmen; and once there, each preacher, each earnest professor, doing bold and fearless missionary work, became the nucleus round which a little knot of true believers gathered. Two or three of them made short visits to Kentucky during the first few years of its existence. One, who went thither in the early spring of 1776, kept a journal of his trip.[4] He travelled over the Wilderness Road with eight other men. Three of them were Baptists like himself, who prayed every night; and their companions, though they did not take part in the praying, did not interrupt it. Their journey through the melancholy and silent wilderness resembled in its incidents the countless other similar journeys that were made at that time and later.