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.

[3] 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.

[4] 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.

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.

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.

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.

[28]) Julian also lost a bid for election to Congress in 1854,[29] when the Kansas–Nebraska Act reopened the slavery debate and accelerated major changes in the country's political party system.

[30] 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.

[33] 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.

The committee had no policy-making function; however, it made recommendations for prosecution of the war and served an avenue for the radical Republicans to force their policies on the Abraham Lincoln administration.

It passed the House along party lines, with a vote of 75 to 64; however, U.S. Attorney General James Speed halted the confiscations before the Senate could take up the bill.

[33][48] Julian opposed Lincoln's Reconstruction policy,[49] preferring the plans outlined in the Wade–Davis Bill of 1864,[50] and became a strong advocate of giving the former slaves voting rights.

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.

[55] 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.

"[56] 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.

[60] Although Julian's primary political goal in the 1850s and 1860s was the abolition of slavery and challenging its expansion into the western United States, he was a longtime supporter of women's enfranchisement.

As Julian explained in his memoirs, "the subject was first brought to my attention in a brief chapter on 'the political non-existence of woman,' in Miss [Harriett] Martineau's book on 'Society In America,' which I read in 1847.

She there pithily states the substance of all that has since been said respecting the logic of woman's right to the ballot, and finding myself unable to answer it, I accepted it.

"[61] While campaigning in 1853 Julian invited Frances Dana Barker Gage and Emma R. Coe, early advocates for woman suffrage, to lecture in his hometown of Centreville.

[citation needed] In 1867 Morton gerrymandered Julian's district, which was strongly antislavery and unshakeable in its support for the congressman, by replacing several of its most radical counties with pro-Democratic ones.

[64][65] As a result, Julian had a hard fight and barely won re-election in 1868,[33] amid accusation of voting fraud in Richmond, Indiana.

[66] In 1869 Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment giving black men the right to vote,[67] and Julian persuaded himself that the fight against slavery had been won.

As his memoirs noted, some of the most prominent and consistent enemies of slavery—Salmon P. Chase, Charles Sumner, and Horace Greeley, especially—had been all but forced out of the Republican Party that they had helped to create.

[68] In his bid for re-election to Congress in 1870, Julian faced a strong conservative challenger, Judge Jeremiah M. Wilson, for the nomination.

In 1873 the former congressman and his family settled in Irvington, a suburban community east of downtown Indianapolis, where he remained active in politics and practiced law.

[74] Julian shared Democratic views on the tariff, on currency questions, and on the fight against the railroads, land speculators, and monopolists.

[citation needed] In his later years Julian lived in Indianapolis, where he settled in the Irvington community, and remained active in politics and focused on literary pursuits.

[73] While representing Indiana's citizens in the U.S. Congress, Julian became known for his strong character and for his antislavery agitation during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era.

[33][75] An obituary published at the time of Julian's death described the radical politician as a "doctrinaire rather than a statesman" and remembered him as an "eloquent speaker," a "forceful writer", and a "powerful champion" of the causes he favored.