Paul E. Johnson (1) (1942–)

In Sam Patch, The Famous Jumper, Paul E. Johnson traces the life and career of Sam Patch as insight into the culture of Jacksonian America. Discussing Patch’s two most famous jumps at Niagara and Genesee Falls, Johnson argues, “These two waterfalls… were places at which (and about which) the more comfortable and enterprising Americans invented, acted out, and publicized lessons about material progress and spiritual uplift that they would carry through the century” (pgs. show more xi-xii).

Johnson links Sam’s first publicized jump at Passaic Falls with the changing forces of industrialization and shifting class consciousness. He writes that Patch’s jump was “a grand and eccentric gesture thrown into contemporary conversations about nature and economic development, class and masculinity, and the proper uses of waterfalls” (p. 43). Johnson continues, “When Sam Patch said that leaping waterfalls was an art, he tied his jumps to familiar notions of Anglo-American manhood. In Patch’s world a man’s art was his identity-defining skill” (pg. 53). Turning to Niagara Falls, Johnson discusses how the upper classes used visits to the falls to circumscribe ways of appreciating aesthetic beauty, particularly natural wonders (pg. 80). Patch added greater showmanship, incorporating clothing and symbols that reflected his tradesman background. Johnson concludes of his Niagara leap, “The immense power and the old vertical horrors of Niagara provided the backdrop. The skill, daredevil courage, and plucky nonchalance (with its touch of the morose and suicidal) of Sam Patch provided the action” (pg. 123).

The Genesee Falls at Rochester further dramatized the clash between natural wonder and industrializing development in the Jacksonian Republic. Despite the grand designs of the wealthy, a thriving working class established communities on both sides of the river. Johnson writes of Patch’s time in the Flour City, “Insofar as Sam Patch had a sponsor in Rochester, it was the town’s sporting crowd. More particularly, it was the loose fraternity of men who drank alcohol” (pg. 134). He continues, “A walk through Rochester was a play of story and memory that constituted another city – a city that had become a battleground between the respectables and the people who befriended Sam Patch” (pg. 142). The very place of Sam’s leap dramatized this clash. Johnson writes, “From where Sam’s audience stood, with Frankfort and Dublin at their backs, with the cracked limestone shelves on which the city stood clearly visible, and with the giddy disorder of the chasm at their feet, it was the landscape of progress that seemed somehow thoughtless and dangerously out of place” (pg. 153).

Following Sam Patch’s death, he transformed into a celebrity and figure out of folklore onto whom various writers projected their ideas of the American spirit. Johnson concludes, “Sam Patch won a new kind of fame. He was born into obscurity, and he did nothing that classicists considered worthy of renown. Yet he wanted to be famous and he succeeded: he made a name that everyone knew, deeds that everyone had heard of, virtues and peculiarities that were the stuff of boyhood fantasies and barroom jokes” (pg. 164). Johnson’s account of Patch’s life provides unique insight into the Jacksonian period, while his larger conclusions about class, gender, and celebrity speak to the nature of American mass culture in the twenty-first century, helping to shed light on its early origins in a readable and authoritative volume that describes events modern readers would recognize from their own diet of popular culture. show less

Very interesting, but somewhat outdatded in its analysis. The introduction to the second edition (2004) addresses many of the criticisms other historians had had at that point and explains the goals of the book and where Johnson might approach it differently. I found that intro to be very helpful both for the additional context and in reassuring me that I wasn't simply ignorant when I doubted his analysis or felt it was lacking.

On the whole, I feel like I got a lot out of the book, despite show more its flaws (and there are so many). While I'm skeptical of Johnson's explanation of why certain events happened as they did, the facts are that they did happen, and seeing how the temperance movement developed in Rochester alongside the shift from an agrarian to industrial economy, for example, gave me some insight into the broader social changes across the country in the same period. I also saw how the practice of social history, which heavily used quantifiable data, worked and where it was lacking, and how that contributed to the methods of history used now.

I was not at all satisfied with the explanation of the revivals, though Johnson was effective in linking it to a growing middle class and showed how it was tied to political parties in the town. I also felt the use of percentages without referring to raw numbers obscured how little quantifiable data he had and suggested much stronger evidence. At one point he describes universal Christian beliefs that suggest he doesn't think of Catholics as Christian - this lined up with some other ways he discusses the revival to make me think he hadn't examined his own assumptions about religion and what joining a church means. (I specifically highlighted a point where he says the workers who were church members must have been more skilled than non-members, and that is why they were hired, though a few pages earlier he had described advertisements that plainly said the company owners would only hire church members. It seemed to me like a new version of the closed ranks of the Masons.)

Overall a valuable book for insight into doing history and a close examination of a single town, and for the factual evidence. I wouldn't rely on any of the analysis, though the general conclusions do appear to be correct. show less

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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) show less