and preached to those convicted by the Holy Spirit. Each thus constituted a spiritual republic unto itself, needing no authorization from outside ecclesiastical forces. On the homefront, Congregationalism became primarily a grouping found among townspeople and affluent urban residents of New England, New York state, the Great Lakes region, portions of the Great Plains, and the Pacific Coast; roughly speaking, the Northern United States, a region strongly influenced by migrants from New England and New York. By the turn of the 20th century, the churches had begun to attract worshippers from outside their original base constituency of English-speaking Anglo-Americans. Immigrant groups that formed Congregational churches included Volga Germans, Swedes, Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Japanese, and Hawaiians. The Congregational churches also acquired two smaller church bodies: several Congregational Methodist churches in Alabama and Georgia, during the 1890s, and the Evangelical Protestant Churches in 1925, a German-immigrant group located primarily in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Cincinnati, Ohio. Theologically, during the 19th century the Congregationalists shifted gradually from adherence to orthodox Reformed concepts and teachings (e.g., total depravity, limited atonement) toward a decidedly more liberal orientation, facilitated by a group of Yale University-educated pastors in and around the time of the Civil War. Led by the likes of Horace Bushnell and Nathaniel Taylor, the New Divinity men broke, some would say irrevocably, with the older pessimistic views of human nature espoused by classical Congregationalist divines such as Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards, declaring instead a more sanguine view of possibilities for the individual and society. Even as this grand shift may have attracted individuals weary of overbearing, harsh harangues from generations of revivalist preachers, numerous others deplored what they felt was an abandonment of the true faith. Such conservatives, especially outside New England, increasingly sought refuge in churches that held to more rigid doctrine, such as the Baptists and the Presbyterians. Congregationalist losses to Presbyterianism increased greatly in the decades in which the Plan of Union, was in effect. Although it was designed by Connecticut Congregationalists and the Presbyterian General Assembly to avoid duplication of effort in evangelizing the frontier regions, this plan resulted in numerous Congregational-founded parishes being annexed to presbyteries, usually through the pastor's affiliation and often without the local church's assent. The need to dissolve that failed attempt at inter-denominationalism, which had already taken place among the Presbyterians, prompted a national gathering of Congregationalists in 1865 at Boston, Massachusetts. This