George Henry Evans

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George Henry Evans was a radical reformer who protested the American class system by organizing the National Reform Association to establish rural republican townships. Evans, in the early 1840s, campaigned for the idea of free land as a means of attracting the excessive eastern population westward, and, as a result, bringing about higher wages and better working conditions for the laboring man in the eastern industrial areas. For many years the public domain had been regarded as the safety valve of the American political and economic order.

Evans's essay "The Working Men's Declaration of Independence" became a period classic, representing the radical anti-class system sentiment of the east-cost literate working class.

The efforts of Evans and his allies -- notably Horace Greeley -- led to the Homestead Act of 1862. Evans, thus, deserves the title of "Father of the Homestead Act."

Evans was a publisher, and the editor of a series of radical newspapers including: Workingman's Advocate (1829-36, 1844-45), The Man (1834), The Radical (1841-43), The People's Rights (1844), and Young America (1845-49).