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vested in us; we can do nothing to overthrow the system, even if we wished to
do so. To this I reply, I know you do not make the laws, but I also know that
you are the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters of those who do; and if you
really suppose you can do nothing to overthrow slavery, you are greatly mis-
taken. You can do much in every way: four things I will name. 1st. You can
read on this subject. 2d. You can pray over this subject. 3d. You can speak on
this subject. 4th. You can act on this subject….
3. Speak on this subject. It is through the tongue, the pen, and the press,
that truth is principally propagated. Speak then to your relatives, your friends,
your acquaintances on the subject of slavery; be not afraid if you are conscien-
tiously convinced it is sinful, to say so openly, but calmly, and to let your senti-
ments be known….
4. Act on this subject. Some of you own slaves yourselves. If you believe
slavery is sinful, set them at liberty, “undo the heavy burdens and let the op-
pressed go free.” If they wish to remain with you, pay them wages, if not let
them leave you. Should they remain teach them, and have them taught the
common branches of an English education; they have minds and those minds
ought to be improved. So precious a talent as intellect, never was given to be
wrapt in a napkin and buried in the earth. It is the duty of all, as far as they
can, to improve their own menial faculties, because we are commanded to love
God with all our minds, as well as with all our hearts, and we commit a great sin,
if we forbid or prevent that cultivation of the mind in others, which would en-
able them to perform this duty. Teach your servants then to read &c, and en-
courage them to believe it is their duty to learn, if it were only that they might
read the Bible….
The women of the South can overthrow this horrible system of oppression and
cruelty, licentiousness and wrong. Such appeals to your legislatures would be
irresistible, for there is something in the heart of man which will bend under moral
suasion. There is a swift witness for truth in his bosom, which will respond to truth
when it is uttered with calmness and dignity. If you could obtain but six signa-
tures to such a petition in only one state, I would say, send up that petition, and
be not in the least discouraged by the scoffs, and jeers of the heartless, or the
resolution of the house to lay it on the table….
6. Reformer Dorothea Dix Depicts the Horrible
Conditions Endured by the Mentally Ill, 1843
Gentlemen,—I respectfully ask to present this Memorial, believing that the
cause, which actuates to and sanctions so unusual a movement, presents no
equivocal claim to public consideration and sympathy. Surrendering to calm
and deep convictions of duty my habitual views of what is womanly and becom-
ing. I proceed briefly to explain what has conducted me before you unsolicited
Dorothea Dix, petition of the Massachusetts Legislature (1843). Also found in Our Nation’s Archive. Erik Bruun and Jay
Crosby (New York: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers, 1999), 266–268.
REFORM AND THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
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and unsustained, trusting, while I do so, that the memorialist will be speedily
forgotten in the memorial….
… I have seen many who, part of the year, are chained or caged. The use of
cages all but universal…. [C]hains are less common; negligences frequent, wilful
abuse less frequent than sufferings proceeding from ignorance, or want of con-
sideration. I encountered during the last three months many poor creatures wan-
dering reckless and unprotected through the country…. I have heard that
responsible persons, controlling the almshouses, have not thought themselves
culpable in sending away from their shelter, to cast upon the chances of remote
relief, insane men and women. These, left on the highways, unfriended and
incompetent to control or direct their own movements, sometimes have found
refuge in the hospital, and others have not been traced. But I cannot particular-
ize. In traversing the State, I have found hundreds of insane persons in every
variety of circumstance and condition, many whose situation could not and
need not be improved; a less number, but that very large, whose lives are the
saddest pictures of human suffering and degradation….
DANVERS. November. Visited the almshouse. A large building, much out of
repair….
Long before reaching the house, wild shouts, snatches of rude songs, impre-
cations and obscene language, fell upon the ear, proceeding from the occupant
of a low building, rather remote from the principal building to which my course
was directed. Found the mistress, and was conducted to the place which was
called “the home” of the forlorn maniac, a young woman, exhibiting a condi-
tion of neglect and misery blotting out the faintest idea of comfort, and outrag-
ing every sentiment of decency. She had been, I learnt, a respectable person,
industrious and worthy. Disappointments and trials shook her mind, and, finally,
laid prostrate reason and self-control…. She had passed from one degree of vio-
lence to another, in swift progress. There she stood, clinging to or beating upon
the bars of her caged apartment, the contracted size of which afforded space only
for increasing accumulations of filth, a loud spectacle. There she stood with na-
ked arms and dishevelled hair, the unwashed frame invested with fragments of
unclean garments, the air so extremely offensive, though ventilation was afforded
on all sides save one, that it was not possible to remain beyond a few moments
without retreating for recovery to the outward air. Irritation of body, produced
by utter filth and exposure, incited her to the horrid process of tearing off her
skin by inches. Her face, neck, and person were thus disfigured to hideousness.
She held up a fragment just rent off. To my exclamation of horror, the mistress
replied: “Oh, we can’t help it. Half the skin is off sometimes. We can do nothing
with her; and it makes no difference what she eats, for she consumes her own
filth as readily as the food which is brought her.”…
Men of Massachusetts, I beg, I implore, I demand pity and protection for
these of my suffering, outraged sex. Fathers, husbands, brothers, I would suppli-
cate you for this boon; but what do I say…. Here you will put away the cold,
calculating spirit of selfishness and self-seeking; lay off the armor of local strife
and political opposition; here and now, for once, forgetful of the earthly and
perishable, come up to these halls and consecrate them with one heart and one
304 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
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mind to works of righteousness and just judgment. Become the benefactors of
your race, the just guardians of the solemn rights you hold in trust….
7. Joseph Smith Records a Revelation
on Plural Marriage, 1843
1. Verify, thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph, that inasmuch as
you have inquired of my hand to know and understand wherein I, the Lord,
justified my servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as also Moses, David and
Solomon, my servants, as touching the principle and doctrine of their having many
wives and concubines—…
4. For behold, I reveal unto you a new and an everlasting covenant; and if
ye abide not that covenant, then are ye damned; for no one can reject this cov-
enant and be permitted to enter into my glory….
37. Abraham received concubines, and they bore him children; and it was
accounted unto him for righteousness,…
38. David also received many wives and concubines, and also Solomon and
Moses my servants, as also many others of my servants, from the beginning of
creation until this time; and in nothing did they sin save in those things which
they received not of me….
61. And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood—if any man es-
pouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent,
and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other
man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto
him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to
no one else.
62. And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot com-
mit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore is
he justified.
63. But if one or either of the ten virgins, after she is espoused, shall be with
another man, she has committed adultery, and shall be destroyed; for they are
given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth, according to my command-
ment, and to fulfil the promise which was given by my Father before the foun-
dation of the world, and for their exaltation in the eternal worlds, that they may
bear the souls of men; for herein is the work of my Father continued, that he
may be glorified.
8. The Seneca Falls Convention
Declares Women’s Rights, 1848
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one portion of the
family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from
R. Marie Griffith, ed., American Religions: A Documentary History (2008), 165–172.
Lydia Sigourney, “Home” (1850).
REFORM AND THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
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that which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect
to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that im-
pel them to such a course.
We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these
rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it,
and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on
such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate
that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient
causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more dis-
posed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
usurpation, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them
under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to
provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance
of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which con-
strains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation on
the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an
absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid
world.
He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective
franchise.
He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she has
no voice.
He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and
degraded men—both natives and foreigners.
Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise,
thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has op-
pressed her on all sides.
He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many
crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In
the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband,
he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master—the law giving him power
to deprive her of liberty, and to administer chastisements.
He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes
of divorce; in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall
be given; as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women—the law, in all
cases, going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving
all powers into his hands.
306 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
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After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner
of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only
when her property can be made profitable to it.
He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those
she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.
He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he
considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or
law, she is not known.
He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all col-
leges being closed against her.
He allows her in Church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claim-
ing Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some ex-
ceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.
He has created a false public sentiment, by giving to the world a different
code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which ex-
clude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in
man.
He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to
assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her
God.
He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in
her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a
dependent and abject life.
Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this
country, their social and religious degradation—in view of the unjust laws above
mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and
fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have imme-
diate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens
of these United States.
In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of
misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instru-
mentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circu-
late tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the
pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by
a series of Conventions embracing every part of the country.
9. Former Slave Sojourner Truth Links
Women’s Rights to Antislavery, 1851
Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of
kilter. I think that ’twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North,
all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all
this here talking about?
Sojourner Truth in a speech given at a women’s convention in Akron, Ohio (1851).
REFORM AND THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
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That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and
lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps
me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t
I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and
gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could
work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash
as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen them
most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none
but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [Intel-
lect, someone whispers.] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s
rights or negro ’s rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart,
wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights
as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from?
Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing
to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world up-
side down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and
get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing
more to say.
ESSAYS
Religious revivalism was a vital factor underlying the reform movements of the
antebellum era. Religious change, moreover, was significant in and of itself. It
altered the way in which people interacted with one another and with their gov-
ernment and society. Historians, however, disagree over what motivated Amer-
icans to embrace religious belief and what religious change meant for the larger
American society. The following two essays illustrate disagreements about the
place of religion and its relationship to reform. Paul E. Johnson, a historian at
the University of South Carolina, focuses on the religious revivals that swept
through Rochester, New York, in the 1830s. He shows how the revivals stressed
not only that people were moral free agents, but also that they had a responsibil-
ity to reach out to others. The result was attempts to foster morality within soci-
ety that resulted in movements of social control aimed at the working classes. In
contrast, Nell Irvin Painter, of Princeton University, focuses on the life and times
of Sojourner Truth, a former slave from New York. Painter shows the power of
religion in Truth’s life as she moves from enslavement, though the Kingdom of
Matthias, and ultimately to become an outspoken critic of slavery and for wo-
men’s rights. Religion in her life and relationships at times inhibited her and at
other times liberated her. According to Painter, it was Truth’s religious beliefs
that carried her through each struggle and success.
308 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
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Religious Reform as a Form of Social Control
PAUL E. JOHNSON
Charles Finney’s revival enlarged every Protestant church, broke down sectarian
boundaries, and mobilized a religious community that had at its disposal enor-
mous economic power. Motives which determined the use of that power de-
rived from the revival, and they were frankly millenarian.
As Rochester Protestants looked beyond their community in 1831, they saw
something awesome. For news of Finney’s revival had helped touch off a wave
of religious enthusiasm throughout much of the northern United States. The
revival moved west into Ohio and Michigan, east into Utica, Albany, and the
market towns of inland New England. Even Philadelphia and New York City
felt its power. Vermont’s congregational churches grew by 29 percent in 1831.
During the same twelve months the churches of Connecticut swelled by over a
third. After scanning reports from western New York, the Presbyterian General
Assembly announced in wonder that “the work has been so general and thor-
ough, that the whole customs of society have changed.” Never before had so
many Americans experienced religion in so short a time. Lyman Beecher, who
watched the excitement from Boston, declared that the revival of 1831 was the
greatest revival of religion that the world had ever seen.
Rochester Protestants saw conversions multiply and heard of powerful revi-
vals throughout Yankee Christendom, They saw divisions among themselves
melt away, and they began to sense that the pre-millennial unanimity was at
hand—and that they and people like them were bringing it about. They had
converted their families and neighbors through prayer. Through ceaseless effort
they could use the same power to convert the world. It was Finney himself who
told them that “if they were united all over the world the Millennium might be
brought about in three months. ” He did not mean that Christ was coming to
Rochester. The immediate and gory millennium predicted in Revelation had
no place in evangelical thinking. Utopia would be realized on earth, and it
would be made by God with the active and united collaboration of His people.
It was not the physical reign of Christ that Finney predicted but the reign
of Christianity. The millennium would be accomplished when sober, godly
men—men whose every step was guided by a living faith in Jesus—exercised
power in this world. Clearly, the revival of 1831 was a turning point in the
long struggle to establish that state of affairs. American Protestants knew that,
and John Humphrey Noyes later recalled that “in 1831, the whole orthodox
church was in a state of ebullition in regard to the Millennium.” Rochester
evangelicals stood at the center of that excitement.
After 1831 the goal of revivals was the christianization of the world. With
that at stake, membership in a Protestant church entailed new kinds of personal
commitment. Newcomers to Brick Presbyterian Church in the 1820s had agreed
From “Pentecost” and “Christian Soldiers ” from A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York,
1815–1837 by Paul E. Johnson. Copyright 1979 by Paul E. Johnson. Reprinted by permission of Hill and Wang,
a division of Farrar. Straus and Giroux, LLC.
REFORM AND THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
309
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to obey the laws of God and of the church, to treat fellow members as brothers,
and “to live as an humble Christian.” Each new convert was told that “renounc-
ing all ungodliness and every worldly lust, you give up your all, soul and body,
to be the Lord’s, promising to walk before him in holiness and love all the days
of your life.” Not easy requirements, certainly, but in essence personal and pas-
sive. With the Finney revival, the ingrown piety of the 1820s turned outward
and aggressive. In 1831 Brick Church rewrote its covenant, and every member
signed this evangelical manifesto:
We [note that the singular “you” has disappeared] do now, in the
presence of the Eternal God, and these witnesses, covenant to be the
Lord’s. We promise to renounce all the ways of sin, and to make it the business
of our life to do good and promote the declarative glory of our heavenly Father.
We promise steadily and devoutly to attend upon the institutions and
ordinances of Christ as administered in this church, and to submit our-
selves to its direction and discipline, until our present relation shall be
regularly dissolved. We promise to be kind and affectionate to all the
members of this church, to be tender of their character, and to endeavor
to the utmost of our ability, to promote their growth in grace. We
promise to make it the great business of our life to glorify God and build up the
Redeemer’s Kingdom in this fallen world, and constantly to endeavor to
present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to Him.
In that final passage, the congregation affirmed that its actions—both individually
and in concert—were finally meaningful only in relation to the Coming King-
dom. Everything they did tended either to bring it closer or push it farther away.
Guiding the new activism was a revolution in ideas about human ability.
The Reverend William James of Brick Church had insisted in 1828 that most
men were innately sinful. Christians could not change them, but only govern
their excesses through “a system of moral regulations, founded upon the natural rela-
tions between moral beings, and having for its immediate end the happiness of the
community.” We have seen, however, that certain of those “natural relations”
were in disarray, and that the businessmen and master workmen who were ex-
pected to govern within them were the most active participants in the revival.
Evangelical theology absolved them of responsibility by teaching that virtue and
order were products not of external authority but of choices made by morally
responsible individuals. Nowhere, perhaps, was this put more simply than in
the Sunday schools. In the 1820s children had been taught to read and then
forced to memorize huge parts of the Bible. (Thirteen-year-old Jane Wilson
won a prize in 1823 when she committed a numbing 1,650 verses to memory.)
After 1831 Sunday-school scholars stopped memorizing the Bible. The object
now was to have them study a few verses a week and to come to an understand-
ing of them, and thus to prepare themselves for conversion and for “an active
and useful Christian life.” Unregenerate persons were no longer to be disciplined
by immutable authority and through fixed social relationships. They were free
and redeemable moral agents, accountable for their actions, capable of accepting
or rejecting God’s promise. It was the duty of Christian gentlemen not to govern
310 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
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them and accept responsibility for their actions but to educate them and change
their hearts.
William Wisner, pastor at Brick Church during these years, catal ogued
developments that were “indispensably necessary to the bringing of millennial
glory.” First, of course, was more revivals. Second, and tied directly to the first,
was t he return of God’s people to the uncompromising personal standards of
the primitive Christians and Protestant martyrs. For the public and private
behavior of converts advertised what God had done for them. If a Christian
drank or broke the Sabbath or cheated his customers or engaged in frivolous
conversation, he weakened not on ly his own reputation but the awesome
cause he represented. While Christian women were admonished to discourage
flattery and idle talk and to bring every conversation onto the g reat subject,
troubled businessmen were actually seen returning money to families they
had cheated. Isaac L yon, half-owner o f t he Rochester Woo len Mills, was
seen riding a canal boat on Sunday in the fall of 1833. Immediately he was
before the trustees of his church. Lyon was pardoned after writing a co nfession
into the minutes and reading it to the full congregation. He con fessed that he
had broken the eighth commandment. Bu t more serio us, he admitted, was that
his sin was witnessed by others who knew his standing in the church and in
the community, and for whom the behavior of Isaac Lyon reflected directly on
the evangelical cause. He had shamed Christ in public and given His enemies
cause to celebrate.
Finney’s revival had, however, centered among persons whose honesty and
personal morals were beyond question before they converted. Personal piety and
circumspect public behavior were at bottom means toward the furtherance of
revivals. At the moment of rebirth, the question came to each of them: “Lord,
what wilt thou have me do?” The answer was obvious: unite with other Chris-
tians and convert the world. The world, however, contained bad habits, people,
and institutions that inhibited revivals and whose removal must precede the mil-
lennium. Among church members who had lived in Rochester in the late 1820s,
the right course of action was clear. With one hand they evangelized among
their own unchurched poor. With the other they waged an absolutist and savage
war on strong drink.
On New Year’s Eve of the revival winter, Finney’s co-worker Theodore
Weld delivered a four-hour temperance lecture at First Presbyterian Church.
Weld began by describing a huge open pit at his right hand, and thousands of
the victims of drink at his left. First he isolated the most hopeless—the runaway
fathers, paupers, criminals, and maniacs—and marched them into the grave. He
moved higher and higher into society, until only a few well-dressed tipplers re-
mained outside the grave. Not even these were spared. While the audience rose
to its feet the most temperate drinkers, along with their wives and helpless chil-
dren, were swallowed up and lost. Weld turned to the crowd and demanded that
they not only abstain from drinking and encourage the reform of others but that
they unite to stamp it out. They must not drink or sell liquor, rent to a grog-
shop, sell grain to distillers, or patronize merchants who continued to trade in
ardent spirits. They must, in short, utterly disengage from the traffic in liquor
REFORM AND THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 311
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and use whatever power they had to make others do the same. A packed house
stood silent.
The Reverend Penney rose from his seat beside the Methodist and Baptist
preachers and demanded that vendors in the audience stop selling liquor imme-
diately. Eight or ten did so on the spot, and the wholesale grocers retired to hold
a meeting of their own. The next day Elijah and Albert Smith, Baptists who
owned the largest grocery and provisions warehouse in the city, rolled their stock
of whiskey out onto the sidewalk. While cheering Christians and awestruck sin-
ners looked on, they smashed the barrels and let thousands of gallons of liquid
poison run out onto Exchange Street.
Within a week, Everard Peck wrote home that “the principal merchants who
have traded largely in ardent spirits are about abandoning this unholy traffic & we
almost hope to see this deadly poison expelled from our village.” The performance
of the Smith brothers was being repeated throughout Rochester. Sometimes
wealthy converts walked into groceries, bought up all the liquor, and threw it
away. A few grocers with a fine taste for symbolism poured their whiskey into
the Canal. Even grocers who stayed outside the churches found that whiskey on
their shelves was bad for business. The firm of Rossiter and Knox announced that
it was discontinuing the sale of whiskey, but “not thinking it a duty to ‘feed the
Erie Canal’ with their property, offer to sell at cost their whole stock of liquors….”
Those who resisted were refused advertising space in some newspapers, and in
denying the power of a united evangelical community they toyed with economic
ruin. S. P. Needham held out for three years, but in 1834 he announced that
he planned to liquidate his stock of groceries, provisions, and liquors and leave
Rochester. “Church Dominancy,” he explained, “has such influence over this com-
munity that no honest man can do his own business in his own way….”
Almost immediately, Weld’s absolutist temperance pledge became a condi-
tion of conversion—the most visible symbol of individual rebirth. The teetotal
pledge was only the most forceful indication of church members ’ willingness to
use whatever power they had to coerce others into being good, or at least to
deny them the means of being bad. While whiskey ran into the gutters, two
other symbols of the riotous twenties disappeared. John and Joseph Christopher,
both of them new Episcopalians, bought the theater next door to their hotel,
closed it, and had it reopened as a livery stable. The Presbyterian Sprague broth-
ers bought the circus building and turned it into a soap factory. Increasingly, the
wicked had no place to go.
These were open and forceful attacks on the leisure activities of the new
working class, something very much like class violence. But Christians waged
war on sin, not workingmen. Alcohol, the circus, the theater, and other work-
ingmen’s entertainments were evil because they wasted men’s time and clouded
their minds and thus blocked the millennium. Evangelicals fought these evils in
order to prepare society for new revivals. It was missionary work, little more.
And in the winter following Finney’s departure, it began to bear fruit.
With one arm evangelicals attacked the bad habits and tawdry amusements of
unregenerate workingmen. With the other they offered redemption. They invited
312 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
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