A Shopkeepers Millennium
...elite and middle class, not just the evangelist Charles Finney. Johnson goes through every facet of these people’s lives in discussing the make-up of their economy, to society at the time, and also politics. Before the Second Great Awakening the life of families living in New York was very different than it turned out to be a short while later. In 1825 a Northern business man dominated his wife and children, worked irregular hours, drank a lot of alcohol regularly and the times he went to church or voted were few and far between. Ten years later, due to the influx of religion in their lives, the same man would attend church twice a week, drank nothing but water, treated his family with kindness and love, worked a steady job, and campaigned for the Whig party. Apparently some scholars have argued the point that businessmen at this time were simply adapting to an expanding market economy and developing new ways of dominating others, however; Johnson argues that the middle class became modern and democratic at this time through religious means. The participants who were mainly involved in revivals at this time were merchants and masters (who were the proprietors of family firms), businessmen, master craftsmen and their families. Basically, they were the most firmly rooted men in town. Churches were full of rich men. In 1820, the people of Rochester lived intermingled with one another and their businesses with no special zoning areas of town and no zoning areas based on class. After 1825, Masters began to move their families away from their businesses. Neighborhoods began to portray social status block by block. By 1830, the classes had separated themselves in every facet of their lives; they had separate and distinct spheres. Many political factions arose in Rochester beginning in the 1820’s. The presidential election of 1824 and 1828 helped split the people politically as well. The Clintonians called themselves the People’s Party; they were New England merchants and manufacturers. The Bucktails called themselves “merchants,” but were mainly businessmen and lawyers. Both of these groups were rich. The division amongst these people was apparently not their social class, but family...