Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Julian, George Washington

JULIAN, George Washington, statesman, b. near Centreville, Ind., 5 May, 1817. He received a common-school education, taught for three years, studied law, and was admitted to practice in 1840. He was elected to the Indiana house of representatives in 1845 as a member of the Whig party; but becoming warmly interested in the slavery question through his Quaker training, severed his party relations in 1848, became one of the founders and leaders of the Free-soil party, was a delegate to the Buffalo convention, and was then elected to con- fress, serving from 3 Dec, 1849, to 3 March, 1851. n 1852 he was a candidate for the vice-presidency on the Free-soil ticket. He was a delegate to the Pittsburg convention of 1856, the first National convention of the Republican party, and was its vice-president, and chairman of the committee on organization. In 1860 he was elected as a Republican to congress, and served on the joint committee on the conduct of the war. He was four times re-elected, and served on the committee on reconstruction, and for eight years as chairman of the committee on public lands. He espoused the cause of woman suffrage as early as 1847, and in 1868 proposed in congress a constitutional amendment conferring the right to vote on women. During the discussions on reconstruction he was zealous in demanding the electoral franchise for the negro. In 1872 he joined the Liberal Republicans, and supported Horace Greeley for president. His most strenuous efforts in congress were directed to the championship of the homestead policy and the preservation of the public lands for the people. In May, 1885, he was appointed surveyor-general of New Mexico. He has published " Speeches on Political Questions." containing a sketch of his life by Lydia Maria Child (Boston, 1872), and " Political Recollections " (Chicago, 1884), and has con- tributed to magazines and reviews articles dealing with political reforms. — His brother, Isaac Hoover, journalist, b. in Wayne county, Ind., 19 June, 1823, removed to Iowa in 1846, "resided there till 1850, and returning to Indiana settled in Centreville and edited the "Indiana True Republican," which he afterward published in Richmond, Ind., under the title of "The Indiana Radical." He occupied several local offices in that town, removed to San Marco, Texas, in 1873, and since that date has edited the " San Marco Free Press." He has published, besides numerous poems, pamphlets, and essays, a " Memoir of David Hoover 1 (Richmond, Ind., 1857).