 Due to the second Great Awakening many of them had either become Baptists or converted to denominations such as Methodism or Presbyterianism before moving to what is now Coles county.The prevalence of New Englanders and New England transplants from upstate New York made Coles county culturally continuous with the culture of New England for the first several decades of its history, this resulted in the county having a large amount of support for the abolitionist movement during the decades preceding the Civil War, and correspondingly a strong support for the Republican party.Relatively large amounts of German immigrants arrived in Coles County beginning in 1849, these immigrants were also almost unanimously abolitionists.