Yet the irreligion of the West was painted darker than it really was. Methodism had struck root where other denominations could not thrive. Its methods and organization, indeed, were peculiarly adapted to a people which could not support a settled pastor. "A sect, therefore, which marked out the region into circuits, put a rider on each and bade him cover it once a month, preaching here to-day and there to-morrow, but returning at regular intervals to each community, provided the largest amount of religious teaching and preaching at the least expense." The Baptists, too, secured a footing in the new communities and labored effectively in creating religious ties between the old and the new sections of the country. In religion as in politics the people of the West were responsive to emotional appeals. The circuit rider, with his intense conviction of sin and his equally strong conviction of salvation through repentance, wrought great crowds in camp meetings into ecstasies of religious excitement. Odd religious sects and strange "isms" were to be found in the back-country. At New Harmony on the Wabash River were the Rappites, a sect of German peasants who came first to Pennsylvania under their leader George Rapp, and who afterward returned thither. At Zoar in Ohio was the Separatist community led by Joseph Baumeler. Shaker societies were formed at many places; and Mormonism was just beginning its strange history through the revelations of Joseph Smith in western New York. The intellectual horizon of the Western world was necessarily limited. Absorbed in the stern struggle for existence, the people had no leisure and no heart to enjoy the finer aspects of life. Education was a luxury which only the prosperous might possess. The purpose to make elementary education a public charge developed tardily. Outside of New England, indeed, a public school system did not exist. Throughout the older portions of the West the traveler might find academies and so-called colleges, but none supported at public expense. The State of Indiana, it is true, entered the Union with a constitution which made it the duty of the legislature to provide, as soon as circumstances permitted, "for a general system of education, ascending in a regular gradation from township schools to a State University, wherein tuition shall be gratis, and equally open to all." But years passed before circumstances permitted the realization of this ideal. Meantime, the prosperous planters of the Southwest employed tutors for their children, and the well-to-do farmers of the Northwest paid tuition for their boys at academies. But young Abraham Lincoln had to teach himself Euclid and to cipher on the back of a wooden shovel, by the flickering embers of a log-cabin fire.