Guarding revival

New York Journal | Remembering the 1857 awakening, and looking for a "new sense of God" | Alisa Harris

What starts in New York City spreads around the country, for good or ill. Some 2,000 people gathered in Manhattan late last month to commemorate the good that had begun 150 years before.

On Sept. 23, 1857, Jeremiah Lanphier climbed the stairs to the third floor of a church on Fulton Street in lower Manhattan. He entered a deserted lecture room and at noon began to pray. Half an hour later, one man joined him. By 1:00, six men were praying. Soon thousands of men and women across the city were praying each day in a movement that became known as the Fulton Street Revival of 1857-1858.

In 1857, 30,000 unemployed men roamed the streets of New York. The economy was hurtling into financial panic: A New York life insurance company had just collapsed and British investors were withdrawing funds from U.S. banks. Positions on slavery were hardening and a city fueled by slave-raised commodities feared the prospect of civil war.