Judge Baylor and Washington County

“Washington-on-the-Brazos was … near the heart of the strife over the future destiny of Texas.  Because the town was marked by frontier conditions, a rough culture loomed large.  Most Washington citizens, however, believed that the young country must be civilized.  … In [1840], Judge Baylor wrote of the potential of the ‘young and beautiful Republic’.  ‘If we’, he went on, ‘as instruments in the hands of Providence, shall be enabled to give to the moral in intellectual elements of society here a happy direction, whilst this country is in its infancy, unborn millions will rise up and call us blessed.’  The awakening of 1841 … gave Baylor’s colleagues the opportunity to do exactly that.  They variously reported the event as a triumph of the civilizing spirit, the acceptance of revelation, the use of means, and the expression of emotion.  They were some of the chief cultural elements that evangelicals fostered, not only in Texas, but also elsewhere.  The revival at Washington-on-the-Brazos lays bare much of the ideological content of the struggle for the soul of Texas, North America and the world beyond."   

– Bebbington, David; Victorian Religious Revivals, The Struggle for the Soul of Texas, Oxford University Press, 2012; page 80-81.