Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/429

Rh but he did not falter. At last his courage won and silence fell upon the assembly. Then his musical voice rang out like a trumpet call. Was this, he said, the party of freedom met on the borders of the free prairies to advance the cause of liberty and human rights? And would the representatives of that party dare to reject the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence affirming the equality and rights of men? After a few such sentences of almost defiant appeal he renewed the amendment to the platform moved by Mr. Giddings, and with an overwhelming shout of enthusiasm the Convention adopted it.

The young man who did this was George William Curtis. I had never seen him before. After the adjournment of that day's session I went to him to thank him for what he had done. We became friends then and there and remained friends to the day of his death. He was then in the flower of youthful manhood. As he stood there in that Convention, dauntless among the seething multitude, his beautiful face radiant with resolute fervor, his peculiarly melodious voice thrilling with impassioned anxiety of purpose, one might have seen in him an ideal, poetic embodiment of the best of that moral impulse and that lofty enthusiasm which aroused the people of the North to the decisive struggle against slavery. Nor was the impression he made then weakened by closer acquaintance. All those who knew him well, found him not only to possess in ample measure the qualities and the lofty inspirations as the personification of which he had appeared in that memorable scene, but also that his whole being breathed an exquisite refinement of moral and esthetic sense, of ways of thinking, of manner and speech, which made his friends feel as if he were almost too gentle a being to be exposed to the ordinary rude jostlings and bufferings of public life,