40 pages • 1 hour read
Paul E. JohnsonA Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1978A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Introduction - Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Introduction Summary
In his introduction, Johnson discusses the historical context for the 1830s Rochester religious revival—a phenomenon he will analyze throughout A Shopkeeper’s Millennium. The book focuses on how the preacher Finney ignited a resurgence of Christian faith in the bourgeoning city of Rochester, beginning in fall 1830. Johnson argues that Finney’s religious revival is historically important as it “climaxed a generation of revivals that historians have called the Second Great Awakening” (4). By “systematically” uncovering the societal forces that led to Rochester’s evangelical revival, Johnson hopes to shed light on the role that religious revivals more generally played in 19th-century America (13).
The preaching of evangelists such as Finney fundamentally altered core Protestant theology in the early 19th-century. Prior to such evangelists, most American Protestants followed the teachings of Calvinism, which preached that human beings were either innately sinful or predestined to enter Heaven. In contrast, Finney and other evangelists believe that every individual has the capacity to be good and must actively pursue such a life through prayer. Such teachings led the middle class to develop an “activist” attitude toward converting non-Christians, and they begin to believe that through prayer they can help spur the second coming of Christ—a belief known as “millennialism” (5).
According to Johnson, most historical accounts of the Second Great Awakening argue that this religious revivalism was a response to feelings of uncertainty following industrialization and the expansion of capitalism. These historians base their arguments on the accounts of Alexis de Tocqueville, a French diplomat who undertook a year-long journey through America in 1831. According to Tocqueville, American society in the 1830s centered around a “collapse of authority at every level,” with churches, local governments, and family units losing their former control over the moral and societal order (9). Historians argue that religious revivalism provided a sense of stability to Americans who felt that traditional societal customs were rapidly breaking down.
Johnson argues that these historical explanations for the rise of religious revivalism are vague and typically based on generalizations rather than close analysis of the actual revival movements. Johnson intends to fix this historical gap with A Shopkeeper’s Millennium by using archival evidence to uncover which types of individuals formed the core of Rochester’s religious revival. As Rochester “was the most thoroughly evangelized of American cities,” a historical analysis of its revival movement can provide special insight into the Second Great Awakening.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Economy”
In “Economy,” Johnson provides a history of the economic growth of Rochester in the early 1800s, as well as an analysis of the city’s class structure. Rochester initially began as a small settlement in New York’s Genesee Valley. Though the Valley was fertile and suited for farming corn and wheat, Rochester was initially cut off from America’s major cities due to a lack of infrastructure connecting “town and country” (16). However, the creation of the Erie Canal in 1823 allowed for boats to sail from Rochester to New York City, connecting Rochester to numerous trade routes. Numerous workers and businessmen poured into Rochester, which became “America’s first inland boom town” (18). Though the city’s main export was flour from its numerous mills, it also developed into a manufacturing center for the Genesee Valley’s growing population.
Johnson argues that the most lucrative business for Rochester merchants was the “country trade,” which centered around business conducted with farmers and the rural small towns that surrounded Rochester (19). Many of Rochester’s most prominent businessmen had grown up in New England and spent time living in Rochester’s rural villages, providing them with intimate links to the country. Johnson argues that these businessmen continued to abide by rural customs even after Rochester became a city, lending Rochester “the economic functions and the business elite of a country market town” (20). Knowing the customs of these rural towns was a necessity for succeeding in business, and foreigners (such as Irish and Scottish immigrants) were often barred from entering into the country trade.
Rochester’s settlement began in the 1810s, when a number of men purchased various tracts of undeveloped land. These men included Nathaniel Rochester, who lent the city its name, and Matthew, Francis, and David Brown. Much of Rochester’s initial growth stemmed from these men bringing in relatives to live on and develop their land. Many of these men, such as Nathaniel Rochester, often used their family connections to accrue enough capital to start their businesses. Johnson argues that such reliance on family ties led to a “fraternalization of economic relationships—both within wealthy families and between them” (27). Economic success in Rochester often relied on belonging to one of Rochester’s wealthy families. Johnson describes two men, Thomas Kempshall and Abelard Reynolds, who found success despite coming from poor families. Both of these men, however, only found success through their social ties to wealthy families and owed their wealth to the “patronage of other men” (31).
Johnson closes the chapter by analyzing which of Rochester’s various classes were most drawn to Finney’s revivals in 1830 to 1831. According to Johnson, most historians have argued that these revivals were popular amongst migrating workers, who sought stability amidst a nomadic lifestyle. Johnson analyzes city records to argue that the opposite occurred in Rochester, with most of the revival’s attendees coming from the middle- and upper-class merchants and businessmen who held stable residence in Rochester. Rather than seeking an escape from “isolation,” Johnson argues that these men turned to the revival to be reaffirmed in their “moral unity” and the righteousness of their lives (36).
Introduction - Chapter 1 Analysis
In the Introduction to A Shopkeeper’s Analysis, Johnson argues for the importance and necessity of writing an in-depth history of early 1830s religious revivals. When historians have sought to explain the evangelical revival, they have largely based their social analysis of the movement on Tocqueville’s contemporaneous account of American society, Democracy in America. Tocqueville’s book was based on his travels throughout the young country and sought to analyze how the new concept of democracy impacted the lives and attitudes of everyday Americans. While the advent of democracy may have granted Americans greater freedoms, Tocqueville also described how Americans felt that the traditional social order was falling apart. Most historians have argued that Americans responded to this growing sense of instability and isolation by embracing religion, which provided “community […] among a nation of rootless individualists” (9).
Johnson is dissatisfied with these historical explanations and argues that they are not based upon concrete history of American society: “We have more generalizations and less solid information on society in the years 1815 to 1850 than on any other period in the American past” (9). A Shopkeeper’s Millennium is meant to fill in that knowledge gap, providing an in-depth analysis of the social factors that allowed for the popularity of Rochester’s religious revival. Johnson’s method is that of a social historian, using “quantitative” analysis of Rochester’s archival records to analyze “family structure, kinship relations, political conflict” and other structures connected to the general social order (13). Johnson feels Rochester’s religious revival is especially important to analyze as it helped to trigger a series of smaller revivals across America. By providing a detailed account of one city’s religious revival, Johnson hopes to offer a more complex and in-depth analysis of the revival movement generally.
Johnson already demonstrates this approach in Chapter 1, while discussing Rochester’s social classes. Most historians prior to Johnson have argued that the revival movement was a response to the “social dislocations that attended migration and the expansion of the market after 1790” (32). If such a thesis were true, revivals would be most popular with young workingmen, who had left their families behind to seek work in America’s growing metropolises. Johnson tests this by analyzing church and city records to determine which groups of Rochesterians most attended Finney’s revivalism. Johnson presents his data in Tables, which shows that Finney’s revival was attended “disproportionately [by] businessmen and master craftsmen and their families” (33). These individuals were the exact opposite of the unattached and migratory workers who most historians have assumed were the heart of the revival movement. Instead, Johnson shows that the revivals were most popular with middle-class individuals who experienced “residential stability” during the 1820s (33). Through his systematic analysis of Rochester’s archival records, Johnson demonstrates that most historians’ understanding of the revival movement is based upon a false generalization.
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