This study investigates the religious origins of the American temperance and antislavery movements in New York State. We introduce new county-level longitudinal data between 1828 and 1838 to document the onset and growth of New York temperance and antislavery societies during the movements’ early stages. Data are compiled from numerous historical sources and document counts of temperance societies in 55 New York counties in years 1828, 1829, 1831, 1833, and 1834; and county-level counts of antislavery societies in years 1835, 1836, 1837, and 1838. The early growth of temperance and antislavery societies across New York counties are examined as outcomes of state building, market changes, and religious activism associated with the Second Great Awakening. We hypothesize that religious activism was positively associated with the establishment of temperance and antislavery societies in New York counties between 1828 and 1834 and between 1835 and 1838, respectively, as well as positively associated with growth in temperance and antislavery societies during these times. Results support our hypotheses with findings suggesting that evangelist activities were substantially influencing both the onset and growth of temperance and antislavery societies during the early stages of these social movements. The evidence is consistent with a “life politics” perspective of social movements and with the argument that US temperance and abolitionism were confessional protests with deep ties to the Second Great Awakening.

The vanishing critique of capitalism within the Sewŏl movement for truth finding has revealed the bare face of the current democratic order and its rule of law. This article presents the Sewŏl movement as the bellwether, in a synchronic sense, of the Candlelight Protests that have become a modality of direct action in South Korea. I seek to contribute to our understanding of the life politics that has become a key marker of struggles against the state-capital network since the 2000s. I ascribe the antinomies of truth finding and mourning and of massacre and accident in the Sewŏl movement to the democratic collective unconscious that regards the 1987 moment in South Korea as an irrevocable rupture from dictatorship to democracy. The Sewŏl movement illuminates how the axes of organization and spontaneity and of reformism and revolution in the Candlelight Protest movement are not so much binaries, or oppositions, as hieroglyphic signs of the democratic unconscious and its excesses that contest the temporalizations of the capitalist present.