An influx of workers, combined with the industrialization of Rochester’s economy, led to workingmen and middle-class residents inhabiting distinct and isolated social spheres. Johnson describes how Rochester’s economy was dominated by a small group of businessmen with intimate ties to Rochester’s surrounding rural villages.Ĭhapter 2 focuses on the growing divide between Rochester’s working and middle classes in the 1820s. Following the digging of the Erie Canal, Rochester became an important trade and manufacturing center for the Upstate New York region, and its population grew dramatically. Rochester was a relatively new city, with its settlement dating to the early 1810s. Johnson’s first chapter describes the economy of Rochester in the 1820s and 30s. Though Johnson’s book focuses solely on Rochester’s revival movement, he believes that a close analysis of Rochester’s revival can provide important insights into contemporaneous revivals throughout America. Johnson believes that such historical arguments are based on generalizations about 1830s society, and he hopes to provide a more concrete analysis of religious revivals with A Shopkeeper’s Millennium. In his Introduction, Johnson notes that most historical accounts have explained the popularity of revivalism as a response to a loss of social order in Jacksonian America.
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