The men who controlled Congress during these years of trial were not the intellectual equals of the famous leaders who figured in the great crisis of 1850, but they were a different and generally a better type.
George Julian
The Public Record
George Washington Julian was a politician, lawyer, and writer from Indiana who served in the United States House of Representatives during the 19th century. A leading opponent of slavery, Julian was the Free Soil Party's candidate for vice president in the 1852 election and was a prominent Radical Republican during the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era.
gutenberg.org
Sumner, I think, was the purest man in the Senate, if not the ablest.
He was pre-eminently the hero of duty, and the servant of what he believed to be the truth.
No man could have made a more absolute surrender of himself to his country in the great conflict which threatened its life.
Henry Wilson earned the gratitude of his country by his unswerving loyalty to freedom, and his great labors and invaluable services as chairman of the Military Committee.
Howard ranked among the first lawyers and most faithful men in the body, and no man had a clearer grasp of the issues of the war.
No one questioned his personal integrity, but in later years he was prompt and zealous in the defense of the worst abuses which found shelter in his party.
He displayed very decided power in the debate on Reconstruction, and very effectively exposed the weakness of the Republicans in practically dealing with the Rebel States as if they were at once in and out of the Union.
His speeches were remarkable for their pungency and wit, and when the question of slavery was under discussion his soul took fire.
He hated slavery with the animosity of a regular Puritan, and when he talked about it everybody listened.
The fate of the men involved in it seems like a perfect travesty of justice and fair play.
The case affords a strange commentary upon the principle of historic justice.
He carried his religion courageously into politics, and while arraigning slavery as the grand rebel, he also severely criticised the management of the war and the Border State policy of the President.
The withdrawal of the slavery question from the strife of parties has changed the face of our politics as completely as did its introduction.
The tyranny of industrial domination, which borrows its life from the alliance of concentrated capital with labor-saving machinery, must be overthrown.
Commercial feudalism, wielding its power through the machinery of great corporations which are practically endowed with life officers and the right of hereditary succession and control the makers and expounders of our laws, must be…
The system of agricultural serfdom called Land Monopoly, which is now putting on new forms of danger in the rapid multiplication of great estates and the purchase of vast bodies of lands by foreign capitalists, must be resisted as a still…
The legalized robbery now carried on in the name of Protection to American labor must be overthrown.
The system of spoils and plunder must also be destroyed, in order that freedom itself may be rescued from the perilous activities quickened into life by its own spirit, and the conduct of public affairs inspired by the great moralities…
Their solution is certain, because they are directly in the path of progress, and progress is a law; but whether it shall be heralded by the kindly agencies of peace or the harsh power of war, must depend upon the wise and timely use of…
The result is certain, since justice can not finally be defeated; but the circumstances of the struggle and the cost of its triumph are committed to the people, who can scarcely fail to find both instruction and warning in the story of the…
Thompson, of Pennsylvania, who served as the parliamentary hangman of his employers, the previous question was seconded on its passage; and thus, without reference to any committee, without even being printed, and with no opportunity…
The sickly air of compromise filled the land, and for a time the deluded masses were made to believe that the Free Soilers had brought the country to the verge of ruin.
The act of September 28th, granting land bounties to the soldiers of the Mexican war, opened the way for the monopoly of many millions of acres of the public domain by sharks and speculators, while proving a wretched mockery of the just…
The times are bad, and want curing; They are getting past all enduring; Let us turn out Martin Van Buren, And put in old Tippecanoe.
Politicians like George Julian
