George Washington Julian (May 5, 1817 – July 7, 1899) 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.
In 1885, President Grover Cleveland appointed him surveyor general of the New Mexico Territory. Julian was the son-in-law of Ohio politician Joshua Reed Giddings and the father of Grace Julian Clarke, a women's suffrage advocate.
Early life and education George Washington Julian was born on May 5, 1817, near Centerville, in Wayne County, Indiana.Centreville was renamed Centerville in 1893. See His Quaker parents, Isaac and Rebecca Julian, had come to Indiana from North Carolina. Isaac died when George was six years old, leaving Rebecca to raise six children.Bodenhamer and Barrows, eds., p. 856.
Julian received a common school education and especially enjoyed reading. At the age of eighteen Julian began a short-lived career as a schoolteacher, but he became dissatisfied with teaching and switched careers. In 1839 a friend suggested that he become a lawyer. Julian studied in the office Centerville attorney John S. Newman. He was admitted to the Indiana bar in 1840 and established a law practice in Greenfield, Indiana before moving back to Centerville to become the law partner with his older brother Jacob.Seldon, p. 32.
Marriage and family Julian married Anne Elizabeth Finch in May 1845, the same year he was elected to the Indiana General Assembly.Seldon, p. 44. The couple had three children (Edward, Louis, and Frederick); two of them (Edward and Louis) died young. Anne died of tuberculosis on November 15, 1860, at the age of thirty-four. Frederick, who became an actor, died in 1911.Riddleberger, p. 312, footnote 1.
On December 31, 1863, Julian married Laura Giddings, the daughter of Joshua Reed Giddings, an abolitionist and a U.S. congressman from Ohio. Julian and his second wife had two children, Grace and Paul. Laura died in 1885.Seldon, pp. 44, 53. Paul became a civil engineer and died in 1929. Grace Julian Clarke became a clubwoman in Indianapolis as well as a women's suffrage advocate. She was one of the founders of the Woman's Franchise League of Indiana. She retained close ties to her father even after her marriage to Charles B. Clarke, an attorney who served as a U.S. deputy surveyor in the New Mexico Territory and also served in the Indiana Senate.Gugin and St. Clair, eds., p. 62. A prolific writer with several published books, she was a newspaper columnist for the Indianapolis Star from 1911 to 1929. Her news articles on the political activities of Hoosier women and their counterparts across the country helped to shape public opinion on women's suffrage and other topics. Grace died in 1938.
Personality and appearance Six feet tall and broad shouldered with a bit of a stoop, Julian was impossible to miss. He also proved to be a challenge to his more moderate colleagues because of his unwillingness to compromise. While campaigning for re-election in 1865, Julian engaged in a violent dispute his opponent, Brigadier General Solomon Meredith, the former commander of the Army of the Potomac's famed Iron Brigade. Meredith eventually attacked Julian with a whip at an Indiana train station, lashing him into unconsciousness, which newspapers described as the "Julian and Meredith Difficulty," labeling both men cowards for their involvement.Lindsey Beckley. "THH Episode 3: George Washington Julian vs. Slavery." Indiana History Blog, Indiana Historical Bureau of the Indiana State Library. May 1, 2017.
In 1866 a reporter noticed Julian's "worn, scarred, seamed and earnest face" from the congressional galleries and remarked: "It is not a pleasant countenance to look upon, but rather grim and belligerent, touched perhaps with a little sense of weary sadness, which grows as you observe. Mr. Julian's head, face, and figure, is of the Round-head, Cromwellian type." An 1868 Philadelphia newspaper described a Washington correspondent's observation of Julian at a congressional reception: "Nature was in one of her most generous moods when she formed him," he wrote, "for he towers above the people like a mountain surrounded by hills. He dwells in a higher atmosphere and snuffs a purer air than most Congressmen, and this may account for his always being found in the right place, never doubtful. People know just what George Washington Julian will do in any national crisis."
Career Julian was a member of five different parties during his political career. He served as a Whig member of the Indiana General Assembly and was elected to five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, one of them as a member of the Free Soil Party and four as a Republican. He was also the Free Soil Party's nominee for U.S. vice president in the 1852 election, but Julian and John P. Hale, the party's presidential nominee, were defeated without winning a single electoral vote. Julian joined the Liberal Republicans in 1872 and supported the Democrats in 1877. He became a member of the Democratic Party in 1884. Julian is best known for his staunch opposition to slavery, as well as his support of land reform and women's suffrage.Gugin and St. Clair, eds., pp. 194–95. Julian countered the frequent criticisms for switching his political alliances by arguing that the parties had altered their positions on political issues, especially slavery, while his views had remained unchanged.
Whig Julian began his political career in 1845. when he was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives as a Whig from Centerville. Julian voted in favor of the Butler bill dealing with the large debts the state incurred as part of its major internal improvement projects, but the move cost him the party's support and the Whig nomination for a seat in the Indiana Senate in 1847. Around this time Julian, who was raised a Quaker, began to change his religious views to Unitarianism.Mary Elizabeth Seldon, "George W. Julian: A Political Independent" in He also became active in Indiana's antislavery movement.
Free Soil party candidate Julian helped found the Free Soil Party, and was a delegate to the party's convention in Buffalo, New York, in 1848. In December he announced his intention to run for Congress and won election as a Free Soil candidate to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1849.When Julian became a Free Soil Party candidate for the U.S. Congress in 1848, Julian's brother asked him to dissolve their law partnership. See Seldon, p. 35.
Julian's election came through a coalition with the Democratic Party in Indiana's Fourth Congressional District, the so-called "Burnt District," in the central-southeastern part of the state.Indiana's pro-Whig Fourth Congressional District received its nickname as the "Burnt District" because Democratic influence had been "burned out" of it. See Seldon, p. 31. The selection seemed, on its face, peculiar. Indiana's Democratic Party was, if anything, less friendly toward antislavery views than its counterparts in Ohio or Illinois, although many of its members favored the exclusion of slavery from territories acquired from Mexico in the recent war. Julian's district was staunchly pro-Whig, and a Democratic nominee had little chance of winning. The district's large Quaker population made it one of the stronger antislavery districts as well. On economic issues Julian's positions leaned more toward the Democrats' doctrines than the Whigs'. He opposed high protective tariffs and had no interest in creating a new national bank. Julian received the support of the Democrats and won election to the Thirty-first Congress in 1849.Riddleberger, pp. 16–49. He was among a small bloc of about twelve votes consisting of Free Soilers and a few others.Seldon, p. 36.
Julian's interest in land reform began in the 1840s and continued for the remainder of his life, although his most significant reform work in this area took place during his twelve-year career in the U.S. Congress.* Julian envisioned families working for themselves on farms that did not rely on slave labor and became concerned with U.S. land policies. On January 29, 1851, he delivered his first House speech in support of Andrew Johnson's homestead bill, but Congress failed to approve the legislation.Roark, pp. 28– 29.
By 1851, when Julian ran for re-election, the state's political conditions had changed significantly.Gugin and St. Clair, eds. p. 195. Under the influence of Indiana's U.S. Senator Jesse D. Bright and others, the state's Democratic Party had become more rigidly opposed to any congressional restriction on slavery in the Mexican cession and supported the Compromise of 1850 and Fugitive Slave Law.Riddleberger, pp. 80–81. In addition, a new state constitution had just been drafted that included a clause (Article XIII, Section 1) that prohibited blacks from migrating into the state. (The clause was removed from the state's constitution by amendment in 1881.) In this antislavery climate the Free Soil and Democratic coalition to elect Julian ran into serious difficulties. Julian found some Democratic support, but not the backing that he had enjoyed in the 1849 election, and he lost to Samuel W. Parker, a conservative Whig who had been his opponent in the 1849 election as well.Riddleberger, pp. 79–83.
In the 1852 presidential election, the Free Soilers (who had named themselves the Free Democracy Party) nominated John P. Hale of New Hampshire as its presidential candidate and found themselves in need of a midwestern man to balance the ticket. Although Julian did not attend the convention in Pittsburgh, the party nominated him for the vice-presidency. Hale and Julian did not win any electoral votes and lost the election to Franklin Pierce and William R. King. (Hale and Julian only received 155,210 popular votes, less than 5 percent of the total.Seldon, p. 39.) Julian also lost a bid for election to Congress in 1854,Seldon, p. 40. when the Kansas–Nebraska Act reopened the slavery debate and accelerated major changes in the country's political party system. Julian joined the People's Party, the precursor to the new Republican party in the state, and became the leader of its antislavery faction.Riddleberger, pp. 94–95.
Republican
In 1856 Julian was a delegate to the convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the Republican Party chose John C. Frémont as their candidate for president in the 1856 United States presidential election.The People's Party changed its name to the Republican Party in 1858. See Riddleberger, p. 111. Julian served as chairman of the committee on national organization.Riddleberger, p. 111. In 1860 he was elected as a Republican to the Thirty-seventh Congress, and won re-election in the Thirty-eighth, Thirty-ninth, Fortieth, and Forty-first Congresses, serving from 1861 to 1871.Southwick, p. 236. Julian, among the most radical of the U.S. House Republicans, was an ardent abolitionist who also became known for his support of civil rights, women's suffrage, and land reform. Appointed to the congressional Committee on Public Lands in 1861, he also served as its chairman from 1863 to 1871.Roark, pp. 31, 34. In addition, Julian was chairman of the Expenditures in the Navy Department (Thirty-ninth Congress).
Civil War