THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
individuals to give legal existence to slavery in any Territories of the United States, branded the reopening of the slave trade as “a crime against humanity, and a burning shame to our country and age,” thus covering all points in actual issue, it failed to mention specifically the great principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence as our political creed and as the moral basis of our free institutions. When the draft of the platform was read to the convention, enthusiastic applause greeted almost every sentence of it, and an impatient call for a vote followed from all parts of the vast assembly. But amid this noise arose above the heads of the multitude the venerable form of Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio. Everybody knew him as one of the veteran champions of the anti-slavery cause. He had pleaded for that cause with undaunted courage and fidelity when even in many parts of the North no one could do so without danger. It was the religion of his life. No sooner had the clamor for a vote sufficiently calmed down to let him be heard, than he expressed himself painfully surprised that the Republican platform, that solemn promulgation of its political faith to be put forth by the party of freedom, should not contain a word of recognition of the Declaration of Independence. He therefore moved to amend it by inserting in a certain place the words: “That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Federal Constitution, ‘that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,’ is essential to the preservation of our republican institutions.”
There are always, in such Conventions, even those that are
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