Returning from his voyages with invigorated health, Lowell devoted himself to business and, in his leisure time, to book collecting, reading, and politics, serving on the Boston Common Council and in the Massachusetts State Senate. The 1820s and 1830s were a turbulent period in New England, marked by intense political and religious conflict between an insurgent popular democracy, which challenged economic and religious establishments, and an emergent capitalist elite which, though almost invariably defeated at the polls, was learning to use its wealth to advance its political agenda through non-political means.