Life, Work, and Times of George Henry Evans, Newspaperman, Activist and Reformer (1829-1849)

Evaluates of the efforts of George Henry Evans to improve the social, political and economic prospects of working-class Americans in a time dominated by what he called ‘law-created privilege’. Evans labored over his press, on meeting hall rostrums and street corner stages for two decades, fighting the privileges favoring (and enacted by) lawyers, bankers, brokers, and clergy. Under the motto ‘principles, not party’ he brought a series of issues, including banking reform and land for actual settlers, to the attention of the electorate and the two-party system. By tracing his career as a whole rather than in the context of discrete issues, and by examining the entire body of his work as part of the times in which he lived, this work presents the man and his ideas in a balanced perspective.