Religion – Popular Politics in Early America

October 22, 2013

A Detailed Look at the Reasons For Slaves to Revolt

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Eugene Genovese’s “Slave Revolts in Hemispheric Perspective” is a detailed analysis of why slave revolts in the Old South were much rarer than in other slave-holding areas. It is clear that Eugene is very well-versed on slave revolts and his research appears to be immense. I enjoyed how he approached the question of why large-scale slave revolts occurred in some areas, but not others. He provided several conditions that made slave revolts more favorable such as blacks outnumbering whites, economic struggles, the number of slaves approaching two hundred per farm, and political instability among the ruling class. Next, Genovese explores some of these conditions in particular and describes how specific situations accentuated his points.

I particularly liked how Genovese described how political divisions could affect the potential for slave revolts. Genovese showed how the United States (specifically the elite Southern slave holders) held the appearance of one big unified structure. While European countries were constantly at war with each other (which dictated that they turn their enemies’ slaves against them), the United States was on the other side of the Atlantic with a centralized government capital located far north. I just think that this reasoning was very effective because it showed a major contrast between the American states and the European powers that struggled to keep slave revolts down.

I also thought that Genovese’s analysis of the leaders of the major slave-revolts in the U.S. was strong. He took us into the minds and backgrounds of Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, and Nat Turner. He showed why each was fit as a slave-revolt leader. Vesey, in particular, had the credentials to lead. He spoke several languages, was well read politically, he had an outstanding group of men directly below his command, and had visited many countries while he was still a slave. Genovese did a good job of showing how these men were qualified to lead, which then made me realize that the lack of slave revolts may be due to a lack of these over-qualified leaders.

Genovese mentions the slaves’ religion a few times throughout the piece. He does an excellent job of explaining how the American slaves developed their own sort of Christianity that did not exactly promote rebellions. The slaves morphed their traditional African folk beliefs into a new Christianity of “love and mutual support,” that emphasized their value as human beings and encouraged an attitude of survival.

Overall, I think that Genovese’s article was detailed and explained exceedingly well. I do not think that his organization was first-rate, but once I followed where he was going, I bought his arguments.

Ian Solcz (Rochester, NY) makes an interesting point at the end of his post next week. He compares and contrasts white and black rebellions and revolutions that we have studied thus far in class. I think he touches on an excellent point of freedom of speech. Slaves lacked the freedom to speak out against their condition, which is obviously a severe handicap for them. Yet, Ian says that their only option left to speak out was through rebellion. While rebelling was probably the most obvious and effective way, I believe that there were other things that slaves could do as well. Teaching each other to read and write, slowing down their pace of work, and organizing networks of communication with other slaves are just a few things that they could do to fight back. Ian makes a good point, I just think that there were more options (not great options though), than he lets on to.

October 10, 2013

Tell Us What to Do and We Will Do It: The Poor Community of Rochester

Like Ian and Ben I too think that Paul Johnson made a great decision using Rochester as the focus of his study. As Ben and Ian both point out Rochester is a city that has a significant amount of diversity due to its ties to major cities through waterways as well as ties to the agriculture community due to its location out “west” making it unlike any other city in the United States at this time. The diversity seen in Rochester grants those who live in or around the city a perspective on relations between those with wealth and those without wealth. It has become painfully obvious through class discussions that wealth, regardless of how one defines it, has turned into political power in the United States. Now this blog isn’t going to head in a direction that many of my other entries have taken in that I am not going to talk about the abuse of power by the wealthy simply because they can do it without any repercussions. However, I can’t deny that this concept appears once again due to the fact that many wealthy “Rochesterians” imposed a sense of religion on the poor of their community because they believed a void or morality existed.

Tension undoubtedly existed between the upper and lower classes of Rochester and by the decision to impose religion on the “poor” by the wealthy did not ease these tensions I would argue with no knowledge of the state of Rochester. I think these tensions would become amplified as the “wealthy” are openly declaring themselves intellectually, financially, and morally superior through their decision to push religion on those beneath them. If I were say a factory worker of Rochester I would take this idea of imposing religion on me as the ultimate insult. What would make matters even worse for me as a factory worker at this time is that those in the upper class honestly believed they were doing me and the “poor” community a favor. However, I could not be more wrong in my thoughts of how a “poor” resident of Rochester would respond. Rather than spark revolution where the “wealthy” would be forced out of power, the poor of Rochester become unified with the wealthy, to an extent, due to the lower class’s decision to embrace the changes imposed upon them. Revivals are highly attended by those from or near Rochester and temperance was widely accepted in the community. I am baffled by the acceptance of this religious movement by the “poor” of Rochester as it seemingly goes against every other movement that had taken place in the United States when “the poor” were told what to do.

So what made the poor embrace the morality changes that they were told to make? Perhaps seeing how rebellions and skirmishes out west resulted for the poor when they defied the wealthy influenced their decision. Maybe members of the poor community took the old adage of “if you can’t beat them, join them” to heart and saw success, a success that was clear enough to other poor community members that they too changed. Regardless of the answer to the question I pose, Rochester successfully finds a way to unite members of the community making them a unique city. Ian’s commentary of Rochester as it exists today continues this idea of a unified city due to the holistic family feel the community has. Whether it be a store like Wegmen’s or a family law practice unity exists. Now the question that I would like to be investigated further is what the wealthy get from a unified community? It would seem that the upper class community would lose power with a more prominent middle class but I don’t see that happening. My thought is backed up by the fact that the Wegman family still runs a highly profitable store without outsiders coming in and wrangling power from them.

October 9, 2013

White Collar Awakening

In A Shopkeeper’s Millennium, Paul E. Johnson depicts the rapid growth of Rochester, using its development to represent major themes occurring around the United States. Notably, he depicts the significance of the Second Great Awakening in Rochester, largely led by Charles Finney. Here, the Second Great Awakening was a white-collar led movement, much like many popular movements in the past and today in which privileged members of society are able to influence the lower classes into following their desired course of action. Through such activism, however, communities such as Rochester could become more socially unified.

The example of Rochester during the Second Great Awakening provides a perfect example for the ability of religion to act as a uniting factor, as I discussed in my post last week. I also noted the potential for religion to be a diversifying issue on a larger scale, some of which was portrayed in the masonic movements in Rochester. In large, however, Charles Finney and the Great Awakening provided a means for the Rochester community to come together, as the revivals became widely attended, extremely public, and the subject of much conversation in the town. Although its existence could be credited to moral movements sparked by the white-collar members of society such as temperance, these religious revivals were able to unite people of all classes as they were placed in equal playing ground in the eyes of God.

Price notes in his post that Rochester was made up of a diverse group of inhabitants, all of which notably have a similar characteristic: to either start anew or “make it big.” Although Finney was invited to Rochester, one cannot help but question his true motives in his revivals. Orators in the Great Awakenings are often critiqued in order to determine whether they truly had a desire to speak God’s word, or if they were simply skilled speakers looking to become famous. It is apparent that Finney made a name for himself in Rochester, and significant how Johnson made sure to clearly note that his revivals were extremely public. He did, however, also note that Finney had a moral influence on the community that led to general improvement. It is an interesting argument, however, and one that would be difficult to prove outright.

Whether his intentions were for morality or “to make it big”, there is no doubt that Finney’s revivals in Rochester unified the community and lad a lasting moral effect. In this sense, Rochester was a microcosm, also mentioned by Price, as religious revivals throughout the United States during the Second Great Awakening had a similar effect. Rochester, however, is interesting due to the expedited nature of its development economically, socially, and mora

October 9, 2013

Rochester, of Social Control

, It is often said that the power of observation grants an enormous amount of power over others. From the panopticon jail where the inmates are perpetually kept alert by the possibility of a guard watching them to a cop on the highway, where just the sight of a police car can stop a speeding automobile in its tracks. Paul E. Johnson applies this theory to the shopkeepers and businessmen in many passages on economy, religion and social functions throughout A Shopkeeper’s Millennium.

In the early 1820s when the businessmen often housed and interacted with their employees for extensive periods of time, the upper class members could exercise subtle but significant power over the people they housed. They would drink with them, socialize and otherwise engage with them as though they were part of the family. This influence of businessmen was evident in that they would initiate trends of social behavior that were appropriate for different events such as drinking and socializing, which their employees would readily adopt in order to conform to the town’s standards and follow the lead of their boss whom they assumed ascribed to the common tradition. When it came to pass, however, that these businessmen opted for a more private life and they evicted many of their workers, the power and influence they had once possessed dissipated and two separate social spheres were created.

These social spheres culminated in a society where the wealthier peoples of Rochester still retained a large amount of power over their workers but in their private affairs the workers could get away with whatever they wanted from wanton drunkenness to abstaining from attending church. This kind of divergent behavior directly stemmed from the absence of a “moral authority” which would enforce temperance restrictions and Christian principles upon them. Johnson explains this progression, saying “but while masters asked wage earners to give up their evil ways, they turned workers out of their homes and into streets and neighborhoods where drinking remained a normal part of life.” This kind of condescending rhetoric aimed at the marginalized factions of society did little to relieve the tensions permeating the stratified peoples of Rochester.

This sort of behavior demonstrates the evolution in the Rochester community from 1820 to 1830. Price mentions that “before the religious behavior of 1830, the relationship was impersonal and strictly businesslike.” I am not sure if he means to address the newfound religious dichotomy in Rochester or the work scene, but I see it in a different light. Prior to the religious revivals and Finney’s actions, the workers and lay-people of the town had lived with their business leaders in a sort of mutual bond where they spent time together with their families and otherwise lived relatively harmoniously. This was a relationship not marked simply by business. After the religious revivals when the churches were filled with majority-upper class peoples, I believe the religious and geographical disparities fostered a greater sense of impersonality.

I would also like to question Johnson’s assertion that “Finney’s male converts were driven to religion because they had abdicated their roles as eighteenth-century heads of households.” This seems to be a fairly vague generalization of the social realities of Rochester. Men did not simply give up their positions as heads of house but instead opted to wield different types of power and administrate their business and the household from a more manufacture-oriented point of view and not only as someone who has symbolic, economic power. In the wake of the temperance movement, women would play larger roles in being moral authorities for sinners to aspire to. This kind of behavior is why their was such a vast economic, social and religious gap between the rich and poor peoples of the town.

October 3, 2013

Religious Revolutionaries

In analyzing the 18^th Century Age of revolutions, interesting parallels between scholarly writings were drawn upon by Shrout and Westbury regarding the relationships of the various revolutions in the Atlantic World. While the argument that ties were felt between revolutionary actors in different areas was legitimate, I found the mention of religion shortly after particularly intriguing. While scholars indicated religion as an organizational factor central to the lives of people in the Age of Revolutions, particularly in the cases of Equiano and the Salzburgs, others such as Gillikin argued that religion was a fracturing identity. Although I have not extensively researched the topic, I would argue that religions effectiveness in revolutionary organization was entirely reliant on the demographic of the rebels.

For example, a country with a recognized state church would find its members much more able to use said church’s institutions as a means to congregate the populace to discuss and resolve issues or make a plan of action on a wide-spread basis that would experience less division because of a greater unanimity of beliefs. A country with no established church, such as the United States, would cater to small-scale organization through religious entities but would find difficulty in finding a consensus cross-religion. Granted, citizens of the United States would be able to find similarities in their desire to express religion freely, but when deciding on major beliefs of a revolutionary movement religious principles could easily find conflict with each other.

In Alex’s post regarding The Meany Headed Hydra, he brings up a good point: “Mobs are desperate and do what they can to achieve their own ends. In my view, class trumps race or any other political category when administrating a revolt.” This idea could be used in the analyzation of the use of religion in revolutionary terms as well: do the ends justify the means? Could different denominations find common ground in order to achieve their goals, nullifying the negative effects of a diverse population? Although it is possible, religion has historically been such a divisive factor that I believe the grievances would have to be very severe for revolutionaries to overlook their religious beliefs in order to achieve a goal.

There are, of course, more factors affecting religion’s influence. The degree of religious devotion, history between different religions and denominations, and the degree of belief similarities would all have effects on the ability for two different religious parties to work together. This does not change the ability, however, for religious institutions to aid in the organization of revolutionary tactics.