George Julian

A great national emergency pleaded for their right to it on other and far more imperative grounds.

The question involved the welfare of both races, and the issues of the war.

It involved not merely the fate of the negro, but the safety of society.

It was, moreover, a question of national honor and gratitude, from which no escape was morally possible.

The people of Indiana had no right to take advantage of their own wrong, or to sacrifice the welfare of four million blacks on the altar of Northern consistency.

He urged that the policy of negro suffrage would give the lie to all the arguments that had ever been employed against slavery as degrading and brutalizing to its victims.

Sumner for proposing to give the ballot to the negroes and disfranchise the white Rebels, but his moral vision failed to discern anything amiss in his own ghastly policy of arming the white Rebels with the ballot and denying it to the…

He seemed to have no faith at all in the beneficent measures designed to guard the black race from outrage and wrong, while full of apprehension that the heavens would fall if such measures were adopted.

If I had been willing to subordinate my political convictions and sense of duty to his ambition, peace could at once have been restored; but as this was impossible, I was obliged to accept the warfare which continued and increased, and…

The majority was over two to one, thus clearly foreshadowing the enfranchisement of the negro in the insurrectionary districts.

It sanctioned the barbarism of the Rebel State Governments in denying the right of representation to their freedmen, simply because of their race and color, and thus struck at the very principle of Democracy.

The conservative party which had so long sought to spare slavery was obliged, as usual, to feel its way cautiously, and wait on the logic of events; while the negro, as I shall show, was finally indebted for his franchise to the desperate…

While I was a believer in Free Trade, I was not willing to follow its logic in all cases of conflict between capital and labor.

My warfare against chattel slavery and the monopoly of the soil had assumed the duty of the Government to secure fair play and equal opportunities to the laboring masses, and I was willing to embody that idea in a specific legislative…

If the member from Maine had the least idea of how profoundly indifferent I am to his opinion upon the subject which he has been discussing, or upon any other subject personal to me, I think he would hardly take the trouble to rise here…

Probably no great question has been so imperfectly understood by our public men as the land question, and the truth of this is attested by the multiplied schemes of pillage and plunder to which the public domain has been exposed within the…

The great body of the land fell into the hands of monopolists, who thus hindered the settlement and productive wealth of the country, while the sum received by the soldier for his warrant was in very many cases a mere mockery of his just…

They not only perfectly satisfied the soldiers everywhere, but revolutionized the opinion of both Houses of Congress, and thus saved the public domain from the wholesale spoilation that had threatened it.

This policy was thoroughly and perseveringly tried, and proved utterly unprofitable and ruinous.

The leasing policy drew into the mining regions a population of vagrants, idlers and gamblers, who resisted the payment of tax on the product of the mines, and defied the agents of the Government.

It excluded sober and intelligent citizens, and hindered the establishment of organized communities and the development of the mines.

The Government had no policy whatever in dealing with these immense repositories of national wealth, and declined to have any; for a policy implies that something is to be done, and points out the method of doing it.

The case was a very curious one, and the more I considered it, the more astonished I became at the strange indifference of the Government, and that no public man of any party had ever given the subject the slightest attention.

The country, loaded down by a great and continually increasing war debt, could not afford to turn away from so tempting a source of revenue.

To sleep over its grand opportunity was as stupid as it was criminal.