Religion and the Rise of the American City: The New York City Mission Movement, 1812-1870 (review)

Field: Social Sciences (Social Sciences)

56CIVIL WAR HISTORY This volume should be added to reading lists suggested for students of history and especially economic history of that period beyond the Civil War. In addition to the advantages of brevity, elementary approach , and balance, the books offers a good bibliography. Overall, then, this compact volume may be expected to serve as an introduction to the "new" economic history of the post-Civil War era at least until time brings the results of further advanced research and with it, a superior introductory volume. David O. Whitten Auburn University Religion and the Rise of the American City: The New York City Mission Movement, 1812-1870. By Carroll Smith Rosenberg. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971. Pp. x, 300. $10.95.) In this revision of a 1968 Columbia University dissertation, Carroll Smith Rosenberg examines the response of Protestants in New York City to urban poverty from 1812 to 1870. Unlike scholars such as Raymond Mohl who have emphasized the desire for social control as the primary motivation of religious missions and philanthropic institutions, Rosenberg views the New York City Tract Society, the Female Moral Reform Society, and the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor as outgrowths of the spread of evangelical revivalism and the influence of English missionary organizations among American Protestants. Individual salvation could be attained, society perfected, and poverty eliminated through purposeful activity directed at the moral instruction and economic relief of the worthy poor. When these goals could not be achieved, whether because the poor remained addicted to alcoholism or Catholicism or a depressed economy failed to generate enough jobs, the institutions attributed their failure to the moral degeneration of the poor. Often men such as Louis Pease of the Five Points House of Industry and Robert Hartley of the AICP combined this moralism with an environmentalist explanation of poverty ; slums were both cause and effect of alcoholism and dependency. Rosenberg admits that the evangelical quest for perfection was consistent with a desire to control and uplift the poor in order to maintain social stability. Religious men and women viewed the search for salvation and social respectability and stability as identical; thus any attempt to distinguish between the desires for evangelical perfection and social control must be artificial. What is striking, however, is that while the relief of poverty has passed from institutions dominated by evangelical Protestants to "scientific charities" determined to prevent the spread of pauperism by curbing indiscriminate alms-giving to public welfare departments under great pressure to stop "chiseling," basic attitudes toward poverty have remained substantially the same. Periodic rediscoveries of the extent and shame of poverty and short-lived BOOK REVIEWS57 movements to eliminate it have soon given way to the usual belief that the poor are poor because they are unworthy. Social control is a persistent theme whether couched in the rhetoric of evangelicalism or science. Rosenberg's decision to divide her study into two parts—1812 to 1837 and 1837 to 1870—underplays some of these continuities and creates a few organizational problems. She introduces each part with a chapter on the general development of the city. The chapters are informative and well-written but somewhat repetitious. In each section she singles out particular institutions for study rather than surveying the movement as a whole. Some groups appear in both parts and occasional backtracking is necessary to keep the story straight. Overall, the book does make significant contributions to the history of religion, social welfare, and New York City. Rosenberg has plumbed the records of the institutions thoroughly and told their story effectively . James F. Richardson University of Akron From Confederation to Nation: The American Constitution, 1835-1877. By Bernard Schwartz. (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. Pp. xi, 237. $10.00.) The subject suggested by this book's title and the repute of its author leads one to expect a significant study. Schwartz has written more than a score of books on constitutional and legal history, including his widely acclaimed five volume commentary on the Constitution. And now it appears that he is using his extensive knowledge of the nation's constitutional development to offer a synthesis of a crucial period in the country's...