"The Rise of Merchant Capitalism in A Shoekeeper's Millennium"

In “A Shoekeeper’s Millennium,” by Paul E. Johnson, an evangelist named Charles Grandison Finney signified the people of Rochester to choose moral sentiment in his speech that paved the way for the Second Great Awakening. It was one of the many revivals since 1790’s that has been altering religious practices and moral beliefs and contributing to changes on an economical, social, and political level. These changes helped shape a rural village into a booming merchant capitalist industry in the center of an agriculturally commercialized economy by distinction between social classes.
Prior to the Rochester revival in 1831 and the development of a merchant capitalist economy, New England farmers on the Genesee Valley were commercializing agriculture by creating enough surpluses to export or trade. The Genesee Valley was becoming the largest grain-growing region in the world, and increased inland transportation extended the farmer’s market for trade and business possib...