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A shopkeeper's millennium : society and…
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A shopkeeper's millennium : society and revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (original 1978; edition 1978)

by Paul E. Johnson

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429557,981 (3.68)8
A quarter-century after its first publication, A Shopkeeper's Millennium remains a landmark work--brilliant both as a new interpretation of the intimate connections among politics, economy, and religion during the Second Great Awakening, and as a surprising portrait of a rapidly growing frontier city. The religious revival that transformed America in the 1820s, making it the most militantly Protestant nation on earth and spawning reform movements dedicated to temperance and to the abolition of slavery, had an especially powerful effect in Rochester, New York. Paul E. Johnson explores the reasons for the revival's spectacular success there, suggesting important links between its moral accounting and the city's new industrial world. In a new preface, he reassesses his evidence and his conclusions in this major work.… (more)
Member:katiealexandramoore
Title:A shopkeeper's millennium : society and revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837
Authors:Paul E. Johnson
Info:New York : Hill and Wang, 1978.
Collections:Your library
Rating:
Tags:American history, 19th century, Second Great Awakening, New York, revivalism

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A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 by Paul E. Johnson (1978)

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Showing 5 of 5
The Second Great Awakening, religion, economy, politics, it's all here. ( )
  BooksForDinner | Feb 1, 2016 |
The interplay of religion, politics and economy in the development of Rochester, NY based around the revival movement of Charles Finney in the early 1830s. Johnson makes the case that revivals were tied to the growth of manufacturing economy. Initially workers lived in the same residence as the business boss/owner so that control was exerted over the workers in regards to social issues. Once the worker moved out on their own religion became the social control because the business owner had little say in their behavior. This made the area ripe for the revival movement.
I found the premise fascinating. Religion was so tied to business and politics, families serving political office en masse and building churches, holding offices there as well, that it seems impossible to separate them in the development of the city. I have never looked at religion as a social condition like this. It was such an interesting snapshot of early Rochester. ( )
  book58lover | Nov 17, 2014 |
The early 1800s in America were a very interesting time. The Revolution was behind us and the population was moving inland. Most U.S. cities were concentrated around sea ports, but the vastness of the interior of the new United States was a big temptation for land speculators and budding farmers. Along with them came a new era of quasi-lawlessness and country justice. Rushing to fill this moral vacuum were local ministers and preachers fostering a sense of personal responsibility and religious living. This was the Second Great Awakening.

Paul E. Johnson’s Shopkeeper’s Millennium traces the effects of the Second Awakening in the town of Rochester, New York. By looking through the tax, census, church, and news records of the city from 1815 to 1837, he posits an interpretation of how the religious revival of 1831 changed the social, political, and economic landscape of the city. The beginning chapters recount the history of the city and how the business relationships shaped the manner by which the revival would shape Rochester’s future. After that, he details the struggle of the economic elite, the Masons, and the evangelicals Charles Finney and Josiah Bissell against the new middle class of business owners burgeoning in Rochester. Later, the evangelical movement actually split the economic elite against itself. Johnson posits that this new religious movement was the impetus behind the Whig party and that its passing signaled the end of the new party.

The sheer amount of Johnson’s research is staggering; the bibliography is worthy of the Yale history professor that he is. His reading of the events isn’t exactly riveting, however. There’s a ton of statistics combined with the feeling that this is definitely a professor’s work. Granted, a whole lot of the general public isn’t clamoring for work on local religious 19th-century history, but this could be a bit better. If you’re a Rochesterian or a American religious scholar, then this is for you. If not, that’s OK. ( )
1 vote NielsenGW | Jan 27, 2013 |
Statistical. Good history of Western New York. ( )
  Savagemalloy | Aug 13, 2012 |
Intro and Ch. 1-3

Johnson places the evangelical Protestant movement within the context of changing social, economic and political relations in the city of Rochester, NY between the years of 1815 and 1837. Johnson's straw man is the argument the "revivals were society's antidote to individualism" (p. 32) Against this, he argues that religious revival was an attempt by old elites to reestablish the patriarchal mores which under girded a specific economic ordering of society.

First, Johnson sets up the economic structure of Rochester at its founding. "Rochester's entrepreneurial community was no capitalist free-for-all. It was a federation of wealthy families and their friends." (p. 27) This was a stable community where, despite the myth of the self-made man, the determinant of prosperity was connections with a family-based elite (p. 31). It was this old elite, grounded in the production for an agriculturally-based market, which flocked to the revivals of Charles G. Finney in 1831 (p. 36).

In his chapter on society, Johnson outlines the patriarchal merchant household which formed the basis for the old elite's conception of society. He does this by contrasting it with what society was increasingly becoming in the 1820s. Work in the original Rochester society took place in the merchant's household. Workers were members of the merchant's family circle. By the time Finney arrived "workingmen were leaving the home of their employers." (p. 45) Merchants were becoming capitalists (p. 41) in the process of separating themselves, both in terms of social status and in terms of physical habitation, from their workers. Johnson notes that throughout the 1820s the workers were increasingly living in neighborhoods distinct from their employers (p. 48).

A proletariat was emerging as a class with distinct interests from its bourgeois employers. The role of the temperance movement was to reestablish bourgeois control over proletarians who were, by definition, workers no longer integrated into the household economy (p. 60) Alcohol had once been a normal part of the household society, now workingmen were drinking outside the control of their employers.

In describing the political ferment surrounding anti-masonry and democratic politics, Johnson shows a front on which the old elites retreated of their own volition. Politics assumed a brawling quality which offended the genteel sensibilities of the "old political families" (p. 70). Significantly, religion and politics were becoming increasingly separated (p. 76). Revival religion would provide an excellent opportunity to reassert the values of that group.

Ch. 4-6 & Afterward

In chapter four, "Impasse", Johnson portrays a working class which is both rowdy and out of control of the elites. To remedy this the elites try two approaches in the 1820s. he first is the approach attempted by the temperance reformers, moral suasion. The leasing men of Rochester joined the temperance movement to set and example for their employees (p. 82). This movement was only partially successful because workingmen had their own neighborhoods where they drank outside the masters' control. A glass of whiskey became a mark of a workingman's independence.

Another way in which elites attempted to regain control was through legislating the observance of the Sabbath. The Sabbatarian movement attempted to pass laws which would make conduct of business on Sunday illegal. Josiah Bissell, founder of the Pioneer Line, was the leader of this movement in Rochester. This attempt to legislate morality was primarily the attempt of wealthier members of the Rochester community, men who were mostly Presbyterians (p. 87). the end result of the Sabbatarian movement was the splitting of the elite , with churches dividing along Sabbatarian and anti-Sabbatarian lines. This division in turn caused a decrease in church membership in the late 1820s (p. 93).

In chapter five, "Pentecost", Johnson demonstrates how the revival movement lead by Finney overcame the division within the Rochester community. The evangelical movement which the revival embodied put the onus on the individual for their own salvation (p. 96). By "uniting in social prayer" believers could convert the heathen. The meetings held by Finney were enormously popular, and "conversions became grand public spectacles" (p. 102).

Examining new church membership, Johnson finds that those who joined the churches during Finney's revivals were primarily those who had "abdicated their roles as eighteenth -century heads of households", i.e. those merchants and master craftsmen who had the closest contact with the working class (p. 108). It is also significant that "women were converting their men". Johnson sees the revivals as a family affair, much in the same way as Mary Ryan. However, Ryan gives much more attention to the role of women as leaders than does Johnson.

By converting merchants and master craftsmen, Finney had constructed the Rochester community. His vision of the Millennium, as something which could be created on earth, united the business community. The division in the churches was overcome by the very nature of the social control which the new religion offered. The merchants and master craftsmen who participated in the revival recognized the fact that social control had now been reshaped in the form of the individual's direct accountability to God. Social controls, in other words, had become internalized (p. 111). Thus the revival allowed for the reconstruction of the "moral personality" in the workingman.

In chapter six, "Christian Soldiers," Johnson addresses the phase of working class assimilation into the churches which occurred in the early 1830s. Building the Millennium in the here and now. Rochester's wealthy merchants even paid for the construction of new workingmen's churches (p. 118). The were also, however, coerced by their employer to go to church (p. 121). Simply put, those workers who showed no religiosity did not advance in the Rochester business world. As it had always been in this city, "no man made his way alone." Employment, advancement, and credit were all dependent upon others' god will. "By dispensing and withholding patronage, Christian employers regulated the membership of their own class " (p. 127). In concluding this chapter, Johnson argues that the Whig Party was the political manifestation of this new-found religiosity on the part of the merchants and master craftsmen, which squared off against the workingmen's Democratic party during this period (p. 135).

In his afterward, Johnson summarizes his argument for religion as social control. he believes that the revival was the tool of the middle classes in exercising the social control over the working man with the creation of the proletariat. "The religion was not a capitalist plot, But it certainly was a key step in the legitimation of free labor ." (p. 141)
  mdobe | Jul 24, 2011 |
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A quarter-century after its first publication, A Shopkeeper's Millennium remains a landmark work--brilliant both as a new interpretation of the intimate connections among politics, economy, and religion during the Second Great Awakening, and as a surprising portrait of a rapidly growing frontier city. The religious revival that transformed America in the 1820s, making it the most militantly Protestant nation on earth and spawning reform movements dedicated to temperance and to the abolition of slavery, had an especially powerful effect in Rochester, New York. Paul E. Johnson explores the reasons for the revival's spectacular success there, suggesting important links between its moral accounting and the city's new industrial world. In a new preface, he reassesses his evidence and his conclusions in this major work.

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