Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/209

 challenge to a duel followed behind the scenes. As the state of public feeling then was, Mr. Potter thought himself obliged to accept the challenge; and having the choice of weapons according to the code of honor—and thinking it was best to make serious work of it—he chose bowie-knives. Mr. Pryor promptly declined, if I remember rightly, on the plea that the bowie-knife was not a civilized weapon. But as his declination, which was perhaps reasonable enough, was made to appear as a backdown on the part of a Southern “fire-eater,” it started a guffaw all over the North, and Mr. Potter woke up to find himself the hero of the hour. A flood of congratulations poured upon him, and at the Chicago Convention a few months later some enthusiastic admirers presented to him a finely ornamented bowie-knife of gigantic size as a token of public approbation. Mr. Pryor served as a brigadier general in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, and after its close settled down in the City of New York, where in the course of time he became a worthy judge and a highly esteemed citizen. The question whether a challenge sent by a Southerner to a Northerner under the circumstances then existing should have been accepted or declined, has often set me to thinking. Being strongly opposed to the duel on principle, I am naturally inclined to say that it should have been declined. In many cases, I have no doubt, challenges are accepted by men conscientiously disapproving of the practice, because a declination might be interpreted as a want of personal courage. In such cases a declination would in fact be a proof of an order of courage higher than that which is required for exposing one's self to a pistol bullet—the moral courage to subject one's self to an unjust and humiliating imputation rather than do a thing which conscience condemns as wrong. But it will be admitted that at the period of which I speak, the considerations governing men's