The opinion that the social life of the period was desperately unsound was accepted without question by many a socalled interpreter of the times. The observations which President Timothy Dwight, of Yale, made in his Century Sermon * expressed the views of many minds. Dating "the first considerable change in the religious character of the people of this country " with the beginning of the French and Indian War, 2 he continued:
The officers and soldiers of the British armies, then employed in this country, although probably as little corrupted as those of most armies, were yet loose patterns of opinion and conduct, and were unhappily copied by considerable numbers of our own countrymen, united with them in military life. These, on their return, spread the infection through those around them. Looser habits of thinking began then to be adopted, and were followed, as they always are, by looser conduct. The American war increased these evils. Peace had not, at the commencement of this war, restored the purity of life Which existed before the preceding war. To the depravation still remaining was added a long train of immoral doctrines and practices, which spread into every corner of the country. The profanation of the Sabbath, before unusual, profaneness of language, drunkenness, gambling, and lewdness were exceedingly increased; and, what is less commonly remarked, but is perhaps not less mischievous than any of them, a light, vain method of thinking concerning sacred things and a cold, contemptuous indifference toward every moral and religious subject. 3
But this sweeping judgment of Yale's president, together
- 1 A Discourse on Some Events of the Last Century, delivered in the Brick Church in New Haven, on Wednesday, January 7, 1801. By Timothy Dwight, President of Yale College, New Haven, 1801. Cf. this author's Travels in New England and New York, vol. iv, pp. 353 et seq.
- 2 Dwight's Century Sermon, p. 18.
- 3 Ibid., pp. 18 et seq.
