A biographical history of eminent and self-made men of the state of Indiana : with many portrait-illustrations on steel, engraved expressly for this work, Volume I, Part 116

Author:
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Cincinnati, Ohio : Western Biographical Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1038

USA > Indiana > A biographical history of eminent and self-made men of the state of Indiana : with many portrait-illustrations on steel, engraved expressly for this work, Volume I > Part 116

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the best speakers of the West, was the Whig candidate. The canvass was intensely bitter and rancorous. The friends of a life-time, who had become Mr. Julian's enemies the year before, were remorseless in their hos- tility. The charge of "Abolitionism " was flung at him wherever he went, and it is now impossible to realize the odium then attached to that term in the general opinion. The epithets heaped upon him by the Whig press and politicians of the district were so full of polit- ical malice and personal foulness that the fish market would have been ashamed of them. Mr. Julian, how- ever, greatly to the surprise and mortification of his enemies, was elected to the Thirty-first Congress; and no man, of any party, ever charged him with unfaith- fulness in that Congress to the principles he had pro- claimed at home. Braving all threats and intimidation, he stood shoulder to shoulder with his Free-soil asso- ciates in opposing the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, the Texas Boundary Bill, the abandonment of the Wilmot Proviso, and the organization of the House in the interest of slavery. His speeches on the slavery question were able and thorough, and the tone of un- calculating radicalism which pervaded them did much to exile him from public life during the ten following years. His speech on the public lands embodies the leading features of the policy on that subject which has since received the indorsement of all parties, and was declared by some of the leading newspapers of the country to be the most thorough speech ever made on the subject. In the spring of 1851, in compliance with the unanimous wishes of his friends, Mr. Julian became a candidate for re-election. The serious reaction which followed the passage of the compromise measures of the year before had greatly changed the situation; but the Democracy of the district had indorsed his action in Congress, and were ready to stand by him in another race. Mr. Parker was again his competitor, and the contest exceeded the former one in bitterness; but the result would have been more decidedly favorable to Mr. Julian than before but for a faction of intensely pro- slavery Democrats, headed by Oliver P. Morton, after- wards a Senator of the United States, who could not endure the thought of any further alliance with " Aboli- tionism." Through the influence of this faction, Demo- cratic votes enough were withheld from Mr. Julian to defeat his election. Mr. Julian now resumed his pro- fessional labors, and again resolved to have nothing more to do with politics, but, very greatly to his sur- prise, he was nominated the following year for Vice- president of the United States by the Free-soil National Convention, which met at Pittsburgh on the eighth day of August. He accepted the nomination, and made a vigorous canvass on the stump, extending his labors into Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It was during this campaign that Mr. Julian delivered an

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address at -Madison, in this state, upon the political issues of that day, and, in the language of one who heard it, "his logic was as severe and clean cut as blocks of granite ready for the builder's use, and his invective and sarcasm as keen as a Damascus blade." In 1853 Mr. Julian canvassed his congressional district for the purpose of more fully indoctrinating the minds of the people with his own views, and in 1854, when the dogma of "Popular Sovereignty" in the territories sprouted out of the grave of the Wilmot Proviso, and Know-Nothingism made its appearance in our politics, he found it impossible to remain in quiet. The re- peal of the Missouri restrictions gave a new impulse to the anti-slavery movement, and if he had so far played the politician as to join the lodges of the new secret or- dler he could easily have been returned to Congress. But he resolved to be true to his convictions of duty, at whatever cost to himself. Nearly all his old anti-slavery friends joined the order, and turned upon him an averted face. The old Whigs were in it almost to a man, as were a very large proportion of the Democrats, but he fought it with all his powers of argument and invective from the very beginning to the end of its life. As a Western politician, outside of the Democratic party, he stood single-handed and alone, and in his worst estate, according to his own story, he had not to exceed a dozen political friends left in the state. But he kept up the fight without flinching, and was as proud of his final vindication as his political enemies were mortified and chagrined. His anti-Know-Nothing speech delivered at Indianapolis on the 29th of June, 1855, and published at the time in the National Era and Facts for the People, was considered by many the ablest argument extant against that organization, which, for a time, so remarkably took possession of the public mind. It also had its value as a just and stinging rebuke of his anti-slavery friends for their temporizing policy. In the canvass of 1854 they were generally willing to accept a position of subordination, and even of silence, under the new captains who commanded them, Iest the pro-slavery prejudices of the people should be roused and their anti-slavery progress hindered. In many lo- calities they allowed themselves to be so complicated with county offices and peculiar local arrangements that it was not thought wise for an anti-slavery man to offici- ate as a leader. All this was graphically set forth in the speech referred to, while it gave mortal offense to the political trimmers and demagogues who succeeded in making the repeal of the Missouri Compromise the sole issue with slavery, instead of dealing with it as a single link in a great chain of measures aiming at the absolute supremacy of the slave power, and thus in- viting a resistance commensurate with that policy. In 1856 Mr. Julian found it quite as difficult to stand aloof from politics as he had in the two preceding years. The c-8

strange dispensation ushered in by the disruption of the Whig party and the Know-Nothing movement was pass- ing away, but its shadow remained. His uncompromis- ing course in the past, and the signs of his growing popularity through the general acceptance of his views, made his active participation in politics exceedingly of- fensive to the political managers of what was called the " anti-Nebraska" or Fusion movements of the state, but the managers were obliged to accept the inevitable. He attended the first National Republican Convention, at Pittsburgh, on the 22d of February, and was one of its vice-presidents. He was made chairman of the com- mittee on organization, through whose plan of action the party took life and form, and afterward fully justi- fied the ideas he had espoused so zealously, by the plat- form adopted at Philadelphia, in the convention which nominated Fremont and Dayton. But the breach be- tween him and the Indiana leaders remained open. The hand of Know-Nothingism was still seen in their move- ments. In the spring of this year they called a con- vention at Indianapolis, which dodged all the slavery issues except the single one of "Free Kansas." It ex- pressly voted down a proposition to accept even the name Republican, while the Silver-grey Whigs and Fill- more Know-Nothings of the state were recognized as brethren in full communion. At least one man nomi- nated on the state ticket was an avowed Fillmore man, whilst both Fillmore and anti-Fillmore men were chosen as delegates to Philadelphia and for electors for the state. The strongest pro-slavery portions of the state were abandoned in the can- vass because of their strength. Southern Indiana was mainly given over to the tender mercies of Fillmore Know-Nothingism and Buchanan Democracy. The country south of the national road was forbidden ground to anti-slavery speakers, lest success should be imperiled by proclaiming the truth. Neither the eco- nomical nor the moral bearings of the slavery question were much discussed, whilst the real issues tendered in national platform were rarely stated from the stump. Elaborate disclaimers of " Abolitionism " were the or- der of the day, while the people were told that the Re- publican party only opposed the further extension of slavery, which the old Whig and Democratic parties had done years before, and that it was decidedly op- posed to amalgamation, or setting the negroes free. In- deed, so cowardly were the Republican leaders that they systematically suppressed their own electoral ticket during the canvass, until the October election put an end to all hope of a union with the Fillmore party. Such was Indiana Republicanism in 1856, with Oliver P. Morton at its head, and in full sympathy with its spirit and policy. Of course, Mr. Julian could have no sympathy whatever with such tactics. He labored, however, for the success of the ticket, and did his ut-

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most to counteract a policy which he believed at once so false and so fatal, but it was in vain. The ticket was overwhelmingly defeated; and while it was after- wards confessed by intelligent and fair-minded Repub- licans that the campaign had been a mistake, and that the state could have been carried by a bolder fight, the political managers were not in the least conciliated by their humiliating failure, but were even more hostile than ever to Mr. Julian and the principles for which he had contended. During the following year he made a number of speeches in his congressional district, includ- ing a very carefully considered one delivered in Henry County on the 4th of July. It was a pretty thorough analysis and review of Indiana politics during the three previous years, and an attempt to point out the lesson to be gathered by the mistakes and blunders of the political leaders. He attended the Republican state convention at Indianapolis on the 4th of March, 1858, which was called by the same class of politicians who had ruled the party since 1854. The Know Nothing heresy was now out of the way, but they still wished to rid themselves of the anti-slavery principles so broadly laid down in the Republican national platform, and substitute the issue of popular sovereignty in the terri- tories. They not only succeeded in this, but made the non-admission of Kansas with the Lecompton Constitu- tion the sole issue of the canvass The ticket nomi. nated was a Douglas ticket, although every man on it was an old Whig, and the campaign opened under the shadow of the defeat which followed this effort to achieve a victory by running away from the principles of Republicanism, and forming a new party on a plat- form fashioned out of tariff Whiggery and Douglas Democracy. Mr. Julian now had little hope of seeing the Republicans of Indiana take their stand along with those of other Northern States through any efforts he could make; but his own congressional district was fully with him in principle and policy. At the earnest and united solicitation of his friends, he consented to become a candidate for Congress, and made a more vig- orous and thorough canvass of his district prior to the nominating convention than he had ever done before. His competitors were Kilgore, Grose, and Holloway, with Morton as a possible reserve; and the popular tide set so strongly in his favor that he was only defeated by a perfect concentration of the strength of all his competitors. During this and the following year he did his utmost, by public speeches and articles for the press, to prevent the Republicans of Indiana from beating a still further retreat from their principles, but his labors were not very successful. The Legislature of Indiana, in February of that year, indorsed the principles of " Squatter Sovereignty " by an overwhelming majority, and even the better class of Republican papers urged the abandonment of congressional prohibition of slavery

in the territories. Mr. Julian's own congressional dis- trict, however, still remained steadfast, and in the spring of 1860 he was nominated for Congress by a very large majority. He was triumphantly elected in the fall, but his vote fell a little below that cast for the general ticket, owing to the concentrated opposition of old fossil Whiggery and Know-Nothingism as they tumbled into the ditch together. On reaching Washington in the spring of 1861, Mr. Julian was greatly surprised and disappointed by the systematic efforts of the politicians he had vanquished at home to control the civil and military patronage of his district. He had hoped for an end to the old strife, and that he would be accorded the right which the usages of politics gave to members of Congress in such matters. This did not suit the purposes of his foes, and it unavoidably led to still fiercer conflicts between him and them. He accepted their gage of battle, and for many years following, as will be seen, was obliged to encounter their most des- perate and unrelenting efforts to crush him. As a member of the Thirty-seventh Congress, Mr. Julian ranked among the foremost as an able and uncompro- mising Republican. He decidedly condemned Mr. Lin- coln's "Border State" policy, and all temporizing measures. He sought an early occasion to expose the hypocrisy of Secretary Cameron, in pretending to favor an anti-slavery war policy. On the 20th of September he offered a resolution, which was adopted, instructing the Judiciary Committee to report a bill so amending the Fugitive Slave act of 1850 as to forbid the return of fugitives without proof first being made by the claimant of his loyalty to the government. As a mem- ber of the Committee on Public Lands, he assisted in maturing the Homestead Bill, which afterwards became a law. He was chosen by the speaker a member of the Joint Select Committee on the Conduct of the War, which gratified him much, as it gave him a place be- hind the scenes, where he could know something of the movements of our armies and the secrets of our policy; and the revelations which were made to that committee fully confirmed him in his suspicions as to the lack of capacity or want of earnestness on the part of General Mcclellan On the 14th of Jan- uary, 1862, he delivered his speech "On the Cause and Cure of our National Troubles," in which he insisted upon the radical policy, that was finally adopted, of striking at slavery as the cause of the war, the arming of the negroes as soldiers, and the confiscation of prop- erty owned by men who had taken up arms against the government. Like his other speeches during the strug- gle, it breathed the spirit of liberty, and had the merit of careful thought, methodical arrangement, and a re- markably clear and forcible diction. Large editions of it were circulated, and it doubtless played its part in creating the public opinion which finally found expres-

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sion in the action of Congress in inaugurating a more vigorous policy. On the 23d of May following, he again addressed the House, and in a tone of still more intense earnestness. In referring to the language then so current about the sacredness of the Constitution, he said : " It will not be forgotten that the red-handed murderers and thieves who set the Rebellion on foot went out of the Union yelping for the Constitution, which they had conspired to overthrow by the blackest perjury and treason that ever confronted the Almighty." This speech was the key-note of his approaching con- gressional canvass, in which the opposition to him was more rancorous than ever before. The hostility of the Democrats was a gentle zephyr in comparison with the blazing wrath of the Republican leaders, who were now determined, at all hazards, to compass his over- throw. But he dealt with them unsparingly on the stump, avowing the broadest radicalism, denouncing General McClellan as a military fraud, and demanding the employment of all the resources of the nation in crushing the Rebellion. His majority was only one thousand eight hundred and sixty, and nothing saved him from defeat but perfect courage and absolute de- fiance of his enemies. He had against him the general drift of events in this dark year for the Republican cause, the commissioner of patents and his followers, Governor Morton and his instrumentalities, the Indiana Central Railway, which he had offended by defeating its wishes in the matter of route agencies, nine of the twelve Republican papers in the district, and nearly all of its politicians, including the trained leaders whose desperate energy and cunning had pursued him for a dozen years or more. His triumph in this contest had no taint of compromise in it, and he considered it the most honorable event in his career. During the Thirty- eighth Congress much of Mr. Julian's time was em- ployed in the investigations of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, of which he was again appointed a member by the speaker of the House on its organiza- tion. On the 18th of January, 1863, he delivered a speech on "The Rebellion-the Mistakes of the Past and the Duty of the Present," being a review of the political and military situation, and an unsparing arraignment of Democratic policy and Republican con- servatism, based upon knowledge supplied by the in- vestigations of that committee. In the summer of that year, when John Morgan and his men entered Indiana, he enlisted with other volunteers at the call of the Governor, and remained in the service eight days. On the 14th of December following, he reported a bill in Congress for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, and endeavored to secure its passage, but failed. As chairman of the Committee on Public Lands, to which position he had been appointed by Speaker Colfax, he reported a bill in January, 1864, to extend the Homestead Law of 1862 to

the forfeited and confiscated lands of those engaged in the Rebellion. It was a very radical and sweeping proposition, which he had considered with great care, and he discussed it pretty thoroughly in a speech de- livered on the 18th of March. The bill passed the House on the 12th of May, Mr. Julian making the closing speech, in which he was frequently interrupted by Wood, of New York, and Mallory, of Kentucky, but he fully sustained himself in the debate. On the 19th of May, Mr. Mallory renewed the controversy, charging Mr. Julian with falsehood and forgery, in put- ting into the report of the previous debate language personally offensive to him, which had not been uttered on the floor. After he had freely indulged his bad temper, and proved the truth of his charges, as he seemed to think, by calling his party associates as wit- nesses, Mr. Julian disproved them by counter testimony, and, finally, by producing the Globe report, which fully sustained his declarations, and overwhelmed his Ken- tucky antagonist with humiliation and shame. In the mean time, another congressional canvass was pending. In this contest Colonel Solomon Meredith, who had been made a brigadier-general through the influence of Governor Morton and other friends, was Mr. Julian's competitor. The opposition to him was now more furious than ever. The selection of Colonel Meredith as Mr. Julian's competitor showed the utter desperation of the political managers, whose hostility had become a consuming passion ; but they were again disappointed. Mr. Julian was renominated by a majority of more than fifteen hundred votes, and re-elected in the fall by more than seven thousand. During the closing months of the Thirty-eighth and the first session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, Mr. Julian gave his particular attention to the subject of our mineral lands. The question was, whether the fee of these lands should be vested in the miners, as in the case of agricultural lands and those containing iron, copper, and lead, or be retained in the government, leaving the miners a mere right of posses- sion, under regulations to be prescribed by themselves. It was a new question and a very important one, upon which opinions were much divided; but Mr. Julian es- spoused the policy of sale, as the only one which would promote security of titles, permanent settlements, and thorough development. He argued the question very fully and forcibly in a speech delivered in the House on the 9th of February, 1865, and in a report from his committee incorporating the bill submitted by him on the subject. Through the hostile tactics of the dele- gates from California and Nevada his bill was defeated, after an angry debate, in which he paid his respects to those who actively opposed it; but he had the satisfac- tion of seeing the triumph of the principle of ownership in fee, which he had been the first to espouse, while the cumbersome and complicated machinery of the measure

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which became a law was afterwards confessed in re- peated efforts to amend it, so as to satisfy the miners and increase the product of the mines. On the 17th of February, Mr. Julian addressed the House on "Rad- icalism and Conservatism-the Truth of History Vindi- cated," in which he exercised his customary freedom of speech. While his words met a cordial response from the people, they were very offensive to the con- servative leaders at home, whose hostility was thus still further aggravated. During the spring of the year Mr. Julian remained in Washington in attendance upon the sessions of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, and was there at the assassination of President Lincoln. During the afternoon of the next day he attended a caucus of radical Republicans, which met for the pur- pose of considering the necessity for a new Cabinet; and the Committee on the Conduct of the War, of which the new President had been a member, twice met him in special consultation about the situation, and listened believingly to his talk about making "treason odious." He was very cordial to the committee, and seemed to be intensely in earnest; but, a few days afterwards, on the occasion of his meeting the Indiana delegation, he had radically changed his base. In the month of May the Committee on the Conduct of the War completed its final report, which was published in eight volumes, embodying valuable materials for any trustworthy his- tory of the war. On his return home in July, Mr. Ju- lian opened his campaign in favor of negro suffrage. The public mind was by no means prepared for so rad- ical a policy, even in his own congressional district. Many of the most decided anti-slavery men thought it premature, while the Republican politicians were very hostile to it; but for more than three months he faced the question in all its aspects on the stump, and dealt with it without favor or fear. The people were ready to listen to his arguments, and the tide was at last so evidently turning in his favor that, on the 28th of Sep- tember, Governor Morton made an elaborate speech at Richmond, in which he condemned the whole theory of Republican reconstruction, as subsequently carried out, and opposed the policy of negro suffrage by arguments which seemed to be regarded as overwhelming. Mr. Ju- lian replied to him sharply in two leading newspaper ar- ticles, while he made the Richmond speech a text for a still more thorough discussion of the issue on the stump; and at the close of his canvass the Republicans of his district were as nearly a unit in his favor as a party can be made respecting a controverted doctrine. On the 17th of November, by special invitation from the citi- zens of Indianapolis, and members of the Legislature then in session, Mr. Julian spoke at length in that city on the subject of " Reconstruction and Suffrage." Strong efforts were made by the Johnsonized Republicans to pre- vent him from being heard, but his audience was a fine

one, and he was listened to for two hours, and enthusias- tically applauded. Without indulging in any personali- ties, he analyzed unsparingly the doctrines of Governor Morton's Richmond speech, and thus still further offended that gentleman and his particular friends. The Indianap- olis Journal went into spasms of wrath, and declared that he had "the temper of a hedgehog, the adhesiveness of a bramble, the vanity of a peacock, the vindictiveness of a corsair, the hypocrisy of Aminadab Sleek, and the duplicity of the devil." The Journal's writhings showed that Mr. Julian's speech hurt its mentor, and those who followed his teachings. The facts in detail which make up the history of these remarkable strifes between Mr. Julian and prominent members of the Republican party can not here be given, but they are in his possession, and will bear witness that his great offense was his unflinching devotion to what he believed to be the truth, and his refusal, under all circumstances, to become the tool of men whom he regarded as mercenary and unprin- cipled. On the 16th of January, 1866, Mr. Julian made a very thorough speech on "Suffrage in the District of Columbia," which was extensively circulated. On the 29th of the same month he spoke on the joint resolu- tion reported by the Committee on Reconstruction for an amendment to the Constitution; and although the view's he expressed did not then prevail, they were afterwards fully vindicated by the adoption of the four- teenth amendment to the Constitution, and are now unquestioned. In March following, at the request of intelligent working-men in the employment of the gov- ernment, he introduced a bill making eight hours a day's work in the navy-yards of the United States. He had not given much thought to the necessity for such legislation in this country, but the eight-hour movement seemed to him an augury of good to the working classes, as the ten-hour movement had proved itself to be twenty odd years before; and he was quite willing to embody the question in a legislative proposition, and thus invite its discussion and the settlement of it upon its merits. Early in the Thirty-ninth Congress he reported a bill dedicating to homestead settlement all the unsold public lands in the states of Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Florida, aggregating about forty-seven million acres. These lands were liable to purchase in large tracts by speculators whenever the machinery of the land department should be restored to these states : and it was to avert this great mischief, and secure these lands as homesteads for the poor of the South, black and white, that this measure was proposed. It passed the House by a large majority on the 7th of February, and the Senate subsequently, and became a law. On the 16th of March he made an important report, as chairman of the Committee on Public Lands, on the subject of land bounties for soldiers. Petitions were then pouring into both Houses of Congress praying an

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A biographical history of eminent and self-made men of the state of Indiana : with many portrait-illustrations on steel, engraved expressly for this work, Volume I, Part 116

Author: Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Cincinnati, Ohio : Western Biographical Publishing Co. Number of Pages: 1038

Author:
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Cincinnati, Ohio : Western Biographical Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1038