George Henry Evans and the Intersection of Labor and Anti-Slavery

An exploration of America's first labor newspaper The Working Man's Advocate, and specifically its editor George Henry Evans. An under-sung part of American history, Evans played a part in the shaping and ideology of the Free Soil Party that would eventually become the Republican Party. The peculiarity of Evans position on slavery and the abolitionist movement, underscores the complexity of antebellum politics. Evans had a close connection to prominent abolitionist Gerrit Smith and they often wrote to one another in an attempt to bring their two movements closer. Through examining the ways that Evans' views on both slavery and the abolitionist change throughout his lifetime we can understand the complexity of the politics of the early labor movement and its complex relationship with abolitionists.