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

In the late 1820s, most of Rochester’s upper-class residents agreed that alcohol and excessive drinking amidst the working population was a social ill. However, Rochester’s elite disagreed on the best way to respond to drinking: some argued that they should use social pressure to encourage abstinence from drinking, while others argued that power and the law should explicitly outlaw the selling of alcohol.

A group of men favoring the usage of “moral authority” formed the Rochester Society for the Promotion of Temperance in 1828 (79). These men believed that workingmen could be dissuaded from drinking through “persuasion rather than by force” (80). Their beliefs followed the teachings of Boston preacher Lyman Beecher, who argued that attempts to use “coercion” to impose temperance upon workingmen would only backfire and cause further social unrest (83). Instead, these temperance advocates believed that their standings as Rochester’s elite would sufficiently pressure workingmen into following their example and quitting alcohol.

Johnson notes that the members of the temperance society were indeed among “the most respectable, wealthy, moral, and influential individuals in society” (80). These men began a campaign to convince Rochester’s merchants and shopkeepers that imposing temperance upon their workmen would lead to “social peace” and greater workplace productivity (81).