Magyar Egyház, 1976 (55. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1976-06-01 / 6-7. szám

guage (he spoke about six languages fluently) and a pleasant speaking voice.

Kossuth’s first speech in Fanueil Hall in Boston ought to be trotted out every Fourth of July.

Among the things he said was this: “Cradle of American Liberty!” it is a great name; but there is something in it which saddens my heart. You should not say “American liberty.” You should say “Liberty in America.” Liberty should not be either American or European — it should be just “liberty.” God is God. He is neither America’s God nor Europe’s God. He is God. So shall liberty be.

“American liberty has much the sound as if you would say “American privilege.” And there is the rub» Look to history, and, when your heart saddens at the fact that liberty never yet was lasting in any corner of the world and in any age, you will find the key of it in the gloomy truth that all who yet were free regarded liberty as their privilege instead of regarding it as a principle. The nature of every privilege is exclusiveness; that of a principle is communicative.

“Liberty is a principle; its community is its security; exclusiveness is its doom...”

In the East and Middle West Kossuth, accompanied by eight of bis officers, was met with enthusiasm but in the South the Civil War was already casting a long shadow.

Slave holders saw him as a threat. His efforts had prodded the Austrian government into relaxing the feudalistic hold of the nobility on the peasants whom they had treated little better than slaves.

It was this rigid control of the laboring classes that was the reason for the lateness of Hungarian immigration. It was not until the 1870’s that Hungarians began coming to Cleveland to settle.

So there were no Hungarian-Americans to greet Kossuth in Cleveland in the 1850‘s. But he found the Yankees sympathetic. They wrote poems about him, they paid three and four dollars a seat in Meleodeon Hall to hear him and a group of Cleveland women formed a Hungarian Relief Organization, pledging monthly contributions.

In Cleveland he was welcomed with a torchlight procession.

Tickets for the great Kossuth meeting at Melodeon Hall were sold at Brainard’s Music Store. Ten thousand people were expected. Local papers advertised an illustrated book called “Kossuth in England,” for 50 cents. Kossuth cards were 10 cents, Kossuth satin badges 25 cents, Kossuth prints 25 cents at Pearson (evidently a store).

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MAGYAR EGYHÁZ

Kossuth never returned to Hungary because he was still hated and feared by the Emperor right up to his last breath. After his death more than 80 statues were erected to his memory in all parts of Hungary and Kossuth, the exile, was finally buried in his native soil.

The Cleveland statue of Kossuth in L niversity Circle, dedicated in 1902, eight years after his death, was a copy of a statue in Hungary.

Mayor Tom L. Johnson was there, as were 60,000 Clevelanders, to witness the dedication. Mayor Johnson pointed to the true function of the statue when he said, “This statue will live; it will be a guide to those who come after. I am proud that this city is to have such a lasting lesson in patriotism by this monument of one of the world's greatest lovers of freedom.”