Details
KOSSUTH, Lajos (1802-1894), Hungarian president and patriot. Letter signed (“L. Kossuth”), to President Millard Fillmore, Washington City, 12 January 1852. 4 pages, 4to.
KOSSUTH’S FOND FAREWELL TO “THE GREAT REPUBLIC OF THE WEST”
Kossuth’s ends his remarkable American tour (during which he met an admiring Abraham Lincoln), by issuing this eloquent farewell to his host, President Fillmore, and the American people. “The exigencies of my country’s affairs require me to depart from the City of Washington, and fulfill the agreeable duty of acknowledging personally that protective sympathy which many towns, cities and States of this glorious Confederation continue to manifest in favor of the just cause of my country’s downtrodden independence; and the freedom of the European Continent so intimately connected with it…And the millions of my people will revive with hope and confidence when they shall come to know what favours were bestowed upon their exiled chief by the great Republic of the West, in acknowledgment of the justice of Hungary’s cause…” He adds that by bidding for its independence against the Habsburg crown, Hungarians were following “that principle upon which stands so gloriously the very political existence of the U. States.”
His brief tenure as president of Hungary after the 1848 revolutions prompted a backlash by Russian-backed monarchists who forced him into exile in 1850. He fled first to England, where he was warmly received, then came to the U.S., where he stayed from December 1851 to July 1852. His American reception was even greater than in Britain, with Kossuth following in the footsteps of Lafayette by addressing a Joint Session of Congress. Fillmore had him to the White house twice; he toured the heartland, hoping to drum up immigrant support for the European-wide independence movements, and during his stop in Springfield, Illinois, he was honored by a public banquet hosted by Abraham Lincoln, who called the Hungarian the “most worthy and distinguished representative of the cause of civil and religious liberty on the continent of Europe.” Americans in the 19th century were enthusiastic supporters of national minorities seeking to throw off their crowned rulers, especially those such as Kossuth who explicitly cast himself in the tradition of America’s 1776 independence fight.
KOSSUTH’S FOND FAREWELL TO “THE GREAT REPUBLIC OF THE WEST”
Kossuth’s ends his remarkable American tour (during which he met an admiring Abraham Lincoln), by issuing this eloquent farewell to his host, President Fillmore, and the American people. “The exigencies of my country’s affairs require me to depart from the City of Washington, and fulfill the agreeable duty of acknowledging personally that protective sympathy which many towns, cities and States of this glorious Confederation continue to manifest in favor of the just cause of my country’s downtrodden independence; and the freedom of the European Continent so intimately connected with it…And the millions of my people will revive with hope and confidence when they shall come to know what favours were bestowed upon their exiled chief by the great Republic of the West, in acknowledgment of the justice of Hungary’s cause…” He adds that by bidding for its independence against the Habsburg crown, Hungarians were following “that principle upon which stands so gloriously the very political existence of the U. States.”
His brief tenure as president of Hungary after the 1848 revolutions prompted a backlash by Russian-backed monarchists who forced him into exile in 1850. He fled first to England, where he was warmly received, then came to the U.S., where he stayed from December 1851 to July 1852. His American reception was even greater than in Britain, with Kossuth following in the footsteps of Lafayette by addressing a Joint Session of Congress. Fillmore had him to the White house twice; he toured the heartland, hoping to drum up immigrant support for the European-wide independence movements, and during his stop in Springfield, Illinois, he was honored by a public banquet hosted by Abraham Lincoln, who called the Hungarian the “most worthy and distinguished representative of the cause of civil and religious liberty on the continent of Europe.” Americans in the 19th century were enthusiastic supporters of national minorities seeking to throw off their crowned rulers, especially those such as Kossuth who explicitly cast himself in the tradition of America’s 1776 independence fight.