A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837

Over the course of the 1820s, Rochester’s society became increasingly class-stratified, with the working-class and middle-class populations inhabiting separate social spheres. What factors drove this class division? How did Rochester’s working and middle classes respond to this growing divide?

How did Finney’s evangelical teachings differ from traditional Protestant theology? What effect did these teachings have on Finney’s congregants? Did their social attitudes and beliefs change?

What events led to the fracturing of Rochester’s political elite during the 1820s? How did this political divide impact Rochester’s social life?

Compare and contrast the Temperance Movement with the Sabbatarian movement. How did each of these movements respond to the problems of working-class drinking and sin? What tactics and strategies did they embrace?

Throughout A Shopkeeper’s Millennium, Johnson uses statistical analysis of Rochester’s city records to make broader arguments about social attitudes the 1830s. Do you agree with Johnson’s interpretations of his data? Why, or why not?

In the Introduction, Johnson describes how most historians argue that the popularity of religious revivals was due to a growing sense of social isolation and mobility in Jacksonian America. Is this thesis true of Rochester’s religious revival?

Did Finney’s revival encourage his congregants to participate in politics? Why, or why not?

Why did temperance become an important moral virtue to middle-class Americans in the 1820s? How was the issue of temperance used as a way to control Rochester’s working class?