ruffians upon the Northern settlers of Kansas. The polit ical tools of the South were very ready to adopt this compromise of free principles disguised under the attractive name of " Popular Sovereignty." But Mr. Julian was alive to the falseness of its pretensions and the danger of its consequences, and he resisted it with all the strength of his earnest nature. In the same spirit, he fought against the Fugitive Slave Bill, which converted the North into a slave-hunting ground for the South. And he also labored strenuously to restrict, as much as possible, the boundaries of Texas, which, by much political manoeuvring, and in palpable violation of the Constitution of the United States, had managed to gain admission into the Union as a new Slave State. He also, at this early day, zealously advocated the Homestead Policy.

The bold, uncompromising ground which he took against the Slave Power, at every turn, enraged those whose self-interest was involved in the corrupt and artful game, while it also alarmed the timid; for much that now appears wise and just, when reviewed in the light of history, then seemed like a dangerous extreme of radicalism. He was again nominated for Congress, in 1851; but his political opponents rallied against him in such force that they defeated his election.

He was not a man to suppress truth, or to consent merely to whisper it, for the sake of the honors and emoluments of office. He still continued to hurl his sharp and wellaimed spears at the powerful and malignant Demon of Slavery. In 1852, he made a speech at Cincinnati on the "Strength and Weakness of the Slave Power," in which he arraigned both Whigs and Democrats as traitors to freedom, and boldly rebuked the time-serving course of the American churches and their clergy. It was in this year that he was nominated by his party for the VicePresidency, on the ticket with John P. Hale. In 1853, he delivered a speech at Indianapolis on "The

Signs of the

Times The State of Political Parties." It was a dark hour for the Anti-slavery Cause; but he saw gleams of light around the horizon of the clouded sky, and uttered hopeful prophecies, which subsequent events have confirmed. This speech was extensively circulated in the form of a tract, and did much to sustain the courage and strengthen the hands of the friends of freedom. He seized every opportunity to serve the good cause, whether by public addresses, or wayside conversation. In vain was he denounced, persecuted, and threatened with mob. violence; nothing could drive him from the rugged path in which he had chosen to walk, because its end was freedom. In vain was he reminded that he was ruining his prospects in life; nothing could tempt him into the crooked ways of policy. He saw the truth as only honest souls can see it, and he defended it as only brave souls will. When the mysterious Know Nothing Party suddenly burst upon the public, like an army raised by the touch of a magician's wand, he at once perceived that the movement was contrary to the genius of our government and subversive of its principles; and he did battle with it accordingly. His Speech at Indianapolis, in 1855, was published by Dr. Bailey in the "National Era,” and "Facts for the People," and was generally considered the most thorough argumentation of the question. The stand he took on this subject displeased many of his old friends and supporters, and greatly increased the popular hostility he had incurred by joining the Anti-slavery movement. A comparatively small band of freedom, however, adhered to him, and it pretty soon became evident that he was destined to outlive his unpopularity. When the fluctuations of political parties began, in 1856, to tend toward a new form under the name of the National Republican Party, he was chosen a Vice-President of its first Convention at Pittsburg, and Chairman of the Committee of Organization.

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But, while politicians considered him an impracticable man, as they invariably do consider every man who will not bend his principles to party policy, his honest, straightforward, daring course commended him to the respect and confidence of the people; and in the face of very formidable opposition, he was elected to Congress in 1860 by an overwhelming vote; and reëlected during four successive terms. Those ten years in Congress bear record of Herculean labor, and unremitting watchfulness over the true interests of the country. He was prominent and active in all the salutary measures connected with the War of the Rebellion. Though he had great respect for President Lincoln, and approved of his administration in the main, he failed not to rebuke that unnecessary timidity and delay on the part of the government, which so greatly increased the expenditure of lives and treasure. Many considered it impolitic to find any fault, lest political opponents should make use of it to their own advantage; but he conceived that the people, in making him their public servant, had placed him on the watch-tower, and that it was his duty to perform the part of a faithful sentinel. He urged the emancipation of the slaves long before it took place, and, in fact, from the beginning of the struggle; he argued in favor of arming the negroes of the South, as an act of justice as well as of military necessity; he maintained that it was a duty to confiscate the lands of rebels, as a measure of war, and also to furnish homesteads for the soldiers and sailors of the United States; he earnestly demanded the punishment of rebel leaders; he labored for the safe reconstruction of Rebel States; he zealously advocated all the amendments to the Constitution for securing universal freedom and equality of civil rights; and he was the first of our public men to demand suffrage for the emancipated slaves.

But while the pro-slavery army, at every change of base, and in all manner of disguises, found him always

wide awake, with lance in rest, ready to meet their onset, and proclaim their deceptions, he was very far from confining his attention to that range of subjects. He was indeed a man of one idea;" but only in the sense that his one idea was to stand by all right principles, whether his advocacy of them seemed likely, or not, to advance his own interests, or those of his party. He was the first and foremost in advocating the Homestead Policy, which grants homes to poor settlers on the públic domain. And subsequently, when the rights and privileges of the Homestead Bill were endangered by the schemes of land-speculators, he originated his well-known Bill forbidding the further sale of agricultural lands, except in small allotments, and to actual settlers. He vindicated this policy in very able and convincing speeches, and the House voted, nearly two to one, in favor of the proposed measure near the close of the Forty-first Congress. He also lifted up his voice against mammoth grants of land to railroad companies; thereby enabling them to keep large tracts unsettled while they wait to enrich themselves by advance of prices. It is not easy to exaggerate the importance of guarding this country against land monopoly, which has kept the masses in Europe hopelessly poor. It is both kind and politic to facilitate to the ut most the settlement and cultivation of the broad acres of our public domain; for labor constitutes the true wealth of a nation, and one industrious settler is more honorable and useful to the country, than a dozen adventurers who have made themselves millionaires by monopoly. The increase of small farms and comfortable homesteads improves the character of a people, and is far more conducive to national prosperity than ingots of silver and nuggets of gold, the seeking and finding of which inevitably produces deterioration of character; and every process to grow rich suddenly, without labor, has the same

results.

Mr. Julian deserves our gratitude as a public

benefactor for his unwearied exertions to warn the people against land monopoly, to check wastefulness in the disposal of the public domain, and to secure the distribution of it into small farms.

The United States, in the year 1850, granted to the States the swamp and overflowed lands within their borders, and the vigilant eyes of Mr. Julian discovered that great frauds on the rights of the people were being perpetrated under cover of those grants. He accordingly introduced a Bill defining Swamp and Overflowed Lands, the passage of which would save millions of acres for honest settlers. This Bill likewise received a large majority of votes in the House in the Forty-first Congress.

The rich Mineral Lands of the United States also received a share of his attention. He objected to their being reserved from sale, and deprecated the system of leasing them, or the policy of abandoning them to settlers without law, as unwise in an economical point of view, and productive of deleterious moral effects; and the reform which he ably urged on this subject has already been partially carried out.

The interests of Labor and the Resumption of Specie Payments have also been earnestly pleaded for by him. On all these subjects, and various others, he has introduced important measures, and sustained them with speeches more or less elaborate. These are all marked by strong good sense, forcible and well-arranged arguments, habitual independence of thought, a high standard of moral rectitude, and not unfrequently by eloquence of style. Some of them have been justly ranked among the best utterances in the Congress of the United States.

Among his other good services, it would be ungrateful in me to omit that he has introduced and advocated a proposition to grant the Right of Suffrage to Women in the District of Columbia, and in the Territories of the United States; and that he has been outspoken in favor