Returning from the Upper New York United Methodist Annual Conference in Syracuse, I drove to Auburn, New York to visit the home of William Seward, Lincoln’s secretary of state and himself a courageous abolitionist. Central and western New York were famous in the 19th century for religious enthusiasm and social reform.
During the Second Great Awakening early in that century, featuring evangelists such as Charles Finney and Francis Asbury, it became known as the “burned over” district. There had been so much revival that there were supposedly no more souls to save. Later, more esoteric religious enthusiasms arose or thrived there, including Mormonism, Shakerism, free love, and spiritualism.
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