Scope and Content Note
The papers of Joshua Reed Giddings (1795-1864) and George Washington Julian (1817-1899) span the years 1839-1899 and consist primarily of their correspondence. Included are letters written by Giddings to his family from Washington, D.C., while he was in the House of Representatives, 1848-1859, and American consul general in Montreal, Canada, in 1861. Giddings’s correspondents include, Salmon P. Chase, Oliver Johnson, John Gorham Palfrey, Charles Sumner, John Van Buren, and B. F. Wade.
Julian’s correspondence reflects his involvement with the Free Soil movement, the formation of the Republican Party in Indiana in the mid-1850s, the antislavery movement, and Reconstruction. Correspondents include Grover Cleveland, William Lloyd Garrison, Julia Ward Howe, John Stuart Mill, Whitelaw Reid, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Charles Sumner, and Henry Villard. A partial index to the collection is located at the end of Container seven.