From Revivals to Removal: Jeremiah Evarts, the Cherokee Nation, and the Search for the Soul of AmericaBetween the end of the Revolutionary War in 1781 and Andrew Jackson's retirement from the presidency in 1837, a generation of Americans acted out a great debate over the nature of the national character and the future political, economic, and religious course of the country. Jeremiah Evarts (1781-1831) and many others saw the debate as a battle over the soul of America. Alarmed and disturbed by the brashness of Jacksonian democracy, they feared that the still-young ideal of a stable, cohesive, deeply principled republic was under attack by the forces of individualism, liberal capitalism, expansionism, and a zealous blend of virtue and religiosity. A missionary, reformer, and activist, Evarts was a central figure of neo-Calvinism in the early American republic. An intellectual and spiritual heir to the founding fathers and a forebear of American Victorianism, Evarts is best remembered today as the stalwart opponent of Andrew Jackson's Indian policies - specifically the removal of Cherokees from the Southeast. John A. Andrew's study of Evarts is the most comprehensive ever written. Based predominantly on readings of Evarts's personal and family papers, religious periodicals, records of missionary and benevolent organizations, and government documents related to Indian affairs, it is also a portrait of the society that shaped - and was shaped by - Evarts's beliefs and principles. From Revivals to Removal begins with Evarts's education in law at Yale and then discusses the transformative effect of the Second Great Awakening on him and on his notions about social regeneration. Moving to Boston in 1810, Evarts rapidly emerged as a leading figure in the advancement of Christian republicanismthrough his efforts as an editor of the religious newspaper the Panoplist, as the founder of numerous benevolent societies, and as treasurer and later corresponding secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Andrew details how Sabbatarianism, temperance reform, and foreign missions absorbed Evarts's energies and sapped his health. By the 1820s Evarts had focused on "civilizing" Native Americans as a defense against their exploitation by corrupt, land-hungry proponents of a self-serving brand of eminent domain. Opposition to the federal government's plan for removal of the Cherokees forced him into the political arena, brought him up against the disruptive threat of states' rights, pitted him against Andrew Jackson, and spurred him to write the famous "William Penn" essays. In these writings he invoked the great Quaker leader's teachings, specifically as they applied to what Evarts believed were America's moral and legal obligations to the native inhabitants. Evarts, suffering from an ailment of the heart and lungs, exhausted himself in his efforts to block passage of the Indian Removal Bill in 1830 and to muster support for the Cherokees as they worked to press their case before the Supreme Court. He lost at each turn, and died in Charleston, South Carolina, still planning another round in the struggle. Evarts failed to tame the powerful forces of change at work in the early republic, but he did shape broad responses to many of them. Perhaps the truest measure of his influence is that his dream of a government based on Christian principles became a rallying cry for another generation and another cause: abolitionism. |
