Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [501]
RUM, REVIVALS, . . .
The depression galvanized an outpouring of the holy spirit as well as of water in New York City. Upper- and middle-class worshipers flocked to Episcopalian and Presbyterian churches to hear ministers declare the panic to be God’s punishment for the sin of greed and the evil of reckless speculation. Plebeian Protestants, too, filled churches as workshops emptied. In the mid-1830s most artisans had resisted evangelical blandishments and devoted themselves to labor organizing. Now, their unions in ruins, artisans packed into Methodist and Baptist tabernacles and feasted on fiery sermons.
Brand-new sects appeared. William Miller, a modern-day prophet, predicted the end of the world would arrive on April 23, 1843, and be followed promptly by the Second Advent of Christ. Miller’s New York disciples met in a large hall on Chrystie Street. Led by Joshua Himes, a brilliant publicist dispatched to the country’s communications capital to spread the good news, Manhattan’s Millerites helped blanket the nation with four million prophetic charts and pamphlets. In the city itself, believers put out a weekly, the Midnight Cry, and roamed the sidewalks auguring doom. As the final day neared, some gave away their possessions. Many garbed themselves appropriately for their impending transformation into angels by purchasing the “White Muslin for Ascension Robes” advertised in Bowery dry-goods stores. When the end failed to arrive, Miller announced an error in calculations; a revised forecast postponed Judgment Day until October 23, 1844. After a second disappointment, the leadership recanted and the movement dispersed.2
Born-again workers seeking strength and solace also created a working-class temperance movement. In the flush years of the 1830s, most artisans and laborers had spurned the evangelicals’ calls to give up drink, and hard times had driven many more to hard liquor. Yet within a year of the panic, journeymen and day laborers had formed the Temperance Beneficial Association, which set up street-corner pulpits from which reformed drunkards testified that alcohol made bad times worse, not better.
In 1841 journeymen and small masters launched the New York Washington Temperance Society, opening a mission on Chatham Street. Many in the panic-strengthened sects took the temperance pledge hoping Washingtonianism would bring order and self-respect to depression-buffeted lives. With elites insisting that poverty was a sign of dissoluteness, sobriety was a way of attesting respectability. The Washingtonian movement spread swiftly. In six months, it claimed twenty thousand male members in fifty chapters. Thousands of working-class women joined the Martha Washingtonians: wives who watched their husbands squander precious wages or savings on drink had their own reasons for being drawn to the movement.
Washingtonian temperance became the largest popular movement in New York City’s history. While merchants, professionals, and masters held some leading positions, the movement sustained an egalitarian tone, rejected pious coercion, and refused to insist on conversion in Christ. Aware of drinking’s key role in male working-class sociability, Washingtonians sought alternatives to the saloon. They sponsored weekly experience meetings—confessional self-help groups—and offered alcohol-free amusements like steamboat excursions, picnics, dances, bazaars, and concerts. The evangelical American Temperance Union criticized these vulgar innovations; at their meetings, also burgeoning, people listened decorously to clergymen