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

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Pages:300
ISBN:0-7734-7580-X
978-0-7734-7580-9
Price:$199.95 + shipping
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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.

Table of Contents

Table of contents (main headings):
Introduction
1. Coming of Age in America
2. Learning Lessons: The Rise and Fall of the Workingmen’s Party
3. Crosses and Privations: The Business of Reform
4. Bank or No Bank: Evans, the Bank Wars and Independent Non-Partisanship
5. The Radical Years
6. The Mechanisms of Land Reform: The National Reform Association and the new Working Man’s Advocate
7. The Failure of National Reform
Epilogue; Bibliography; Index

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