Paul E. Johnson displays incredible insight on the 1820s to the 1830s in his book “A Shopkeeper’s Millennium” of how the changes in Rochester evolved socially, economically, and spiritually. It was widely accepted and was told to be brutally honest about the intentions of the elites of the time The truth that was spilled onto the pages and were revealed masterfully through his work. It took many years of tracking down enough primary sources to write the book. He touches broadly on all points of change in Rochester. Johnson gives unique insight through primary sources that shatter the previous theologies of the growing society in Rochester. Johnson starts by showing how class relations had rapidly evolved in the 1820s to the 1830s. In the 1820s They decided that if they could not make them obey through example of the higher class, than they would try and shame them into listening. The higher class would come to twist the thoughts of society creating a division in the classes through religion. Johnson shows this by explaining how every shop came on board with the idea of the banning of alcohol, “In workshop after workshop, masters gathered their men and announced that they would no longer provide drinks or allow drinking in the shop, and that the new rules derived from patriotism and religion.” This was their tactic of trying to use religion in justifying why they could enforce a no drinking policy inside of the workshop. There came to be another thing that the religious gentlemen wanted to control, the Erie Canal. When it was built, boaters started to bring about supplies through Rochester. The problem was that they came through seven days a week, including the Sabbath. This angered many church members that men would work on the Lord’s day. The group that came to oppose the Erie Canal boaters called themselves Sabbatarians. They tried to get boaters to stop coming through whether if it was through peaceful boycotting or stopping them by force. This only set a bad example for the working-class when the church members started using violence on the water merchants. This ended up doing no good other than splitting the population and defined who was against who. With the lower class not caring about religion and doing as they pleased behind the masters backs There came to be a separation socially and physically inside of the streets. The poor only hung out with the poor and the rich only hanging out with the rich. The middle-class needed to close the gap and they felt that religion was still the way to do it. So they decided to bring in evangelists to try and start
Review of Frederick Lewis Allen: Since Yesterday: the 1930’s America. (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1939), 362 pp.
The Antebellum Era between the years of 1825 to 1850 was abundant with many reform movements that signified great change within the people of the nation. Although many of these changes were good and lasting reforms, extremists’ stark views did the contrary and inhibited change. Luckily, reform movements such as the women’s rights movement, the abolition of slavery, and temperance all led the nation in the right direction towards the expansion of democratic ideals. These ideals encompass the belief that all citizens are equal and are entitled to certain unalienable rights.
This book follows Johnsons political career, from a eager hard-working congressional secretary to the landslide victor of the 1964 presidential election. It discusses his "liberal" political views, It seems as though Johnson thought he could help the American people single-handedly and he seemed determined to do it. Johnson is He is praised for his vast legislative record and his stand on poverty and eventually, civil rights. He is criticized for his methods and
Many churches were the center of their community in the early-1800s. The church was a place to bind closer relationships with others in the community to include businesses and other social venues. Many public figures had this one thing in common, that is their will of self-perception be defined in the public view as one with character and high moral convictions. Religion produced social morality which became the substance that bound all elements of society in the Jacksonian Era.
Wilentz, Sean. Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. xvii + 396pp. Index, appendix, bibliographical essay, illustrations
While some citizens of the United States, between 1825 and 1850, believed that reform was foolish and that the nation should stick to its old conduct, reformists in this time period still sought to make the United States a more ideally democratic nation. This was an age of nationalism and pride, and where there was pride in one’s country, there was the aspiration to improve one’s country even further. Many new reformist and abolitionist groups began to form, all attempting to change aspects of the United States that the respective groups thought to be unfair or unjust. Some groups, such as lower and middle class women and immigrants, sought to improve rights within the county, while other reformers aspired to change the American education system into a more efficient way of teaching the county’s youth. Still other reform groups, particularly involved in the church and the second great awakening, wanted to change society as a whole. This was a time and age of change, and all these reforms were intended to contribute to the democratic way our country operated.
Many Southerners supported, in some measure, the position of the clergy to some extent. Yet, they did not wish to abandon their system suddenly and without an adequate replacement. They were also concerned that free labor promoted infidelity, secularism, liberal theology, perversities, egotism and personal license to the detriment of God-ordained authority and the Christian social order.
A main characteristic of the Jacksonian Era was the fight for the common man. As the United States grew in size and age, the stratification of society was inevitable. In the 1820's class distinctions became major issues, greatly due to an unchanging and small upper class. This greatly detracted from the American ideal of equality when it came to economic opportunities. The upper class us...
The next few paragraphs will compare blacks in the north to blacks in the south in the 1800’s. In either location blacks were thought of as incompetent and inferior. The next few paragraphs will explain each group’s lifestyle and manner of living.
In chapter “The Other Civil War” of A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn described the underlying class tensions caused by industrialization during the nineteenth century. He claimed that these tensions would have led to radical labor reforms if the working class’s anger had not been directed towards other issues. Zinn used The Age of Enterprise by Thomas C. Cochran and William Miller to show the upper class’s indifference towards the problems of the lower class and to prove that the rich manipulated the poor to promote their own interests. He also used Class and Community by Alan Dawley to offer examples of working class resistance, government oppression, and the effects of the Civil War. While Zinn’s use of Class and Community accurately represents Dawley’s arguments, he misuses some of his evidence from The Age of Enterprise.
John H. Johnson was born January 19, 1918 in rural Arkansas City, Arkansas. His parents were Leroy Johnson and Gertrude Jenkins Johnson. His father was killed in a sawmill accident when little John was eight years old. He attended the community's overcrowded, segregated elementary school. In the early 1930s, there was no public high school for African-Americans in Arkansas. His mother heard of better opportunities for African-Americans in Chicago and saved her meager earnings as a washerwoman and a cook and for years until she could afford to move her family to Chicago. This resulted in them becoming a part of the African-American Great Migration of 1933. There, Johnson was exposed to something he never knew existed, middle class black people.
Andrew Jackson, Southerner, by Mark Cheathem, is an in-depth book on President Jackson’s life and ideologies. Cheatham is a professor at Cumberland University, which is located thirty minutes away from the Hermitage, Jackson’s mansion. His knowledge of the period, lifestyle, and specifically Andrew Jackson’s life while at the Hermitage is astounding. The bulk of his works and article dove into the Jacksonian period and America’s early republic. From the rise of the Democrats to the life of Andrew Jackson’s nephew, Cheathem is a historian who studies ninteenth century history. However, bias was present in the book, since he depicted the South in a positive light. Perhaps, it is because he is from the South. At any rate, slight bias is present within the book, and should be noted when taking into account Jackson’s background, and its effect on Jackson’s
Jonnes, Jill. “South Bronx rising: the rise, fall, and resurrection of an American city.” New York: Fordham University Press. (1986).
The upper class developed the eElite American Culturef which gave them the view that they were superior to the others around them. They also developed a bad view of lower class people as they did not mix with them.
...y as “the root of all evil” would be too simplistic; what she suggests, rather, is that the distribution of wealth in mid-nineteenth-century America was uneven, and that those with money did little to effectively aid the workers whose exploitation made them rich in the first place. In her portrayals of Mitchell and the “Christian reformer” whose sermon Hugh hears (24), she even suggests that reformers, often wealthy themselves, have no useful perspective on the social ills they desire to reform. Money, she seems to suggest, provides for the rich a numbing comfort that distances them from the sufferings of laborers like Hugh: like Kirby, they see such laborers as necessary cogs in the economic machinery, rather than as fellow human beings whose human desires for the comfort, beauty, and kindness that money promises may drive them to destroy their own humanity.