The controversy which began in 1805 continued for about twenty years. The pamphlets and books it brought forth are almost forgotten, and they would have little interest at the present time. They gradually widened the breach between the orthodox and the liberal Congregationalists. It would be difficult to name a decisive date for their actual separation. The organization of the societies, and the establishment of the periodicals already mentioned, were successive steps to that result. The most important event was undoubtedly the formation of the American Unitarian Association, in 1825; but even that important movement on the part of the Unitarians did not bring about a final separation. Individual churches and ministers continued to treat each other with the same courtesy and hospitality as before. That the breach was inevitable seems to be the verdict of history; and yet it is not difficult to see to-day how it might have been avoided. The Unitarians were dealt with in such a manner that they could not continue the old connection without great discomfort and loss of self-respect. They were forced to organize for self-protection, and yet they did so reluctantly and with much misgiving. They would have preferred to remain as members of the united Congregational body, but the theological temper of the time made this impossible. It would not be just to say that there was actual persecution, but there could not be unity where there was not community of thought and faith. When the division in the Congregational churches came, one hundred and twenty-five churches allied themselves with the Unitarians,--one hundred in Massachusetts, a score in other parts of New England, and a half-dozen west of the Hudson River. These churches numbered among them, however, many of the oldest and the strongest, including about twenty of the first twenty-five organized in Massachusetts, and among them Plymouth (organized in Scrooby), Salem, Dorchester, Boston, Watertown, Roxbury, Hingham, Concord, and Quincy. The ten Congregational churches in Boston, with the exception of the Old South, allied themselves with the Unitarians. Other first churches to take this action were those of Portsmouth, Kennebunk, and Portland.