12 Facts About Jeremiah Evarts

Jeremiah and Mehitabel Sherman Evarts were the parents of William M Evarts, who later became a United States Secretary of State, US Attorney General and a US Senator from New York.

Jeremiah Evarts was influenced by the effects of the Second Great Awakening and served the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions as its treasurer from 1812 to 1820 and Secretary from 1821 until he died in 1831.

Jeremiah Evarts was the editor of The Panoplist, a religious monthly magazine from 1805 until 1820, where he published over 200 essays.

Jeremiah Evarts wrote twenty-four essays on the rights of Indians under the pen name "William Penn".

Jeremiah Evarts was one of the leading opponents of Indian removal in general and the removal of the Cherokee from the Southeast in particular.

Jeremiah Evarts engaged in several lobbying efforts including convincing Congress and President John Quincy Adams to retain funding for civilizing efforts.

Jeremiah Evarts was a leader in the unsuccessful fight against President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830.

Jeremiah Evarts hoped to defeat the Indian Removal Act by organizing "friendly congressmen", who he hoped would convince enough Jacksonians removal was immoral, and so pressure them to vote against the bill, while attempting to mobilize public opinion against removal.

Jeremiah Evarts died of tuberculosis on May 10,1831, in Charleston, South Carolina, having overworked himself in the campaign against the Indian Removal Act.

Jeremiah Evarts was buried in the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, CT.

The effect that Evarts's activism for the rights of indigenous peoples had on US foreign policy through his son, William M Evarts who was Secretary of State during the Hayes administration, is a question for historians.

The moral and religious arguments that Jeremiah Evarts used against the Indian Removal Act had later resonance in the abolitionism movement.