From Revivals To Removal: Jeremiah Evarts, The Cherokee Nation, And The Search For The Soul Of America

A missionary, reformer, and activist, Jeremiah Evarts (1781-1831) 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. Alarmed and disturbed by the brashness of Jacksonian democracy, he and many others 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. Although he ultimately failed to tame the powerful forces of change at work in the early republic, Evarts did manage to 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.