Oddly enough, I was invited to dine with Judge Kane, then conspicuous through his remarkable rulings in fugitive slave cases, and I found his manners and hospitality as charming as his opinions about slavery were detestable.
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.
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Indeed, while the champions of slavery were exerting themselves as never before to stifle the anti-slavery spirit of the free States, the Abolitionists were delighted with the tokens of progress which everywhere saluted their vision and…
Political morality was at a very low ebb during the period covered by the Thirty-first Congress.
Thousands of officials were turned adrift for no other than party reasons, while political nepotism was the order of the day.
It was still more common in the House; and the scenes of drunkenness and disorder in that body on the last night of the last session beggared description.
In this Congress, the men who afterward became the chief leaders of the Rebellion were conspicuous, and foreshadowed their future course.
That Virginia is now only fit to be the breeder, not the employer, of slaves!
That she is reduced to the condition that her proud chivalry are compelled to turn slave-traders for a livelihood!
If mere talent could have supplemented the lack of conscience, the slave power might have been overborne in 1850, and the current of American history turned into the channels of liberty and peace.
But the better days of the Republic, when high integrity and unselfish devotion to the country inspired our statesmen, were past, and we had entered upon the era of mean ambitions and huckstering politics.
They were treated as pestilent fanatics because they bravely held up the ideal of the Republic, and sought to make it real.
They had the courage of their opinions, and the genuine satisfaction which accompanies manliness of character; and they lived to see their principles vindicated, and the political and social tables turned upon the men who had honored them…
This will be the sure award of history; but history will find another parentage for the party despotism and political corruption which have since disgraced the administration of the Government.
Sumner moved the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act, and although it received but ten votes, it led to an angry and protracted discussion, which showed how signally the attempt to suppress anti-slavery agitation had failed.
The old party had gone astray too long and too far to return, and now determined to seek its fortunes in the desperate effort to outdo the Democrats in cringing servility to the South.
Here at last, the Whig party had made a complete surrender of its integrity, and verified all that had ever been said by Free Soilers as to its treachery to freedom; and here, finally, these rival parties were tumbled together into the…
The only issue of the canvass was slavery, and on this they were perfectly agreed, while each, for the sake of the spoils of office, was trying to surpass the other in the damning proofs of its treason to humanity and contempt for the…
The spectacle was most pitiably humiliating, but I counted it an omen of progress.
The old parties were now unequivocally committed to the policy of nationalizing the sectional interest of slavery, and the way thus opened for a fair fight.
The lines were clearly drawn, and the issue unmistakably made between freedom and free speech on the one side, and slavery and the gag on the other.
I thought we should have no more anti-slavery professions from Whigs and Democrats, no further courting of Free-Soilers, and no more mutual upbraidings of servility to the South; and that thus the way would be smoothed for intelligent and…
All the compromising and trading elements that had drifted into the movement in 1848 had now gravitated back to the old parties, leaving a residuum of permanent adherents of the cause, who were perfectly ready to brave the frowns of public…
The real enthusiasm of this campaign was in the ranks of the Free Soilers.
They had, of course, no dream of success, or even of carrying a single electoral vote; but they were profoundly in earnest, and united as one man against the combination of the old parties in behalf of slavery.
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.
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