Cartwright, a Methodist missionary, helped start America's Second Great Awakening, personally baptizing twelve thousand converts.

[1] In 1812, Cartwright was appointed a presiding elder (now District Superintendent), and he served in that office for the next thirty-five years.

As a circuit rider, he explained in his Autobiography, "My district was four hundred miles long, and covered all the west side of the Grand Prairie, fully two-thirds of the geographical boundaries of the state."

He opposed the routinization and institutionalization of religion and favored the more democratic, egalitarian, and associational form of the frontier circuits.

Cartwright, who served as a presiding elder for 50 years, demonstrated that the office was that of a sub-bishop who was not always popular with his subordinates.

Cartwright was strong-willed in his office and was often accused of being dictatorial, but he eventually earned notoriety as the father of Illinois Methodism.

He advocated moral suasion to end it, fearing that political action would threaten the federal union, another core element of national identity.

In his Autobiography he said that in Illinois he, would get entirely clear of the evil of slavery, that he could improve his financial situation and procure lands for my children as they grew up.

On the Saturday evening of said meeting, I went, with weeping multitudes, and bowed before the stand, and earnestly prayed for mercy.

In the midst of a solemn struggle of soul, an impression was made on my mind, as though a voice said to me, "Thy sins are all forgiven thee."

I rose to my feet, opened my eyes, and it really seemed as if I was in heaven; the trees, the leaves on them, and everything seemed, and I really thought were, praising God.

My mother raised the shout, my Christian friends crowded around me and joined me in praising God; and though I have been since then, in many instances, unfaithful, yet I have never, for one moment, doubted that the Lord did, then and there, forgive my sins and give me religion.Cartwright died, near Pleasant Plains, Sangamon County, Illinois, on September 25, 1872.