William Penn, 1964 (47. évfolyam, 5-21. szám)

1964-07-15 / 14. szám

July 15, 1964

PAGE 7

William Penn

LINCOLN AND THE HUNGARIANS

By EDMUND VASYARY

(This is copyrighted by the William Penn Fraternal Association

(CONTINUATION)

In the plans of these would-be soldiers of fortune Cuba played an important part: they hoped to effect its separation from Spain and make it an integrated part of the United States. For a while Kossuth and the Italian Mazzini were interested in these plans, but when they found out that Cuba’s annexation was planned mainly with the view that through it slavery would be strengthened in the Southern states, they discontinued all of their connections with the adventurers.

Kossuth wrote to Sanders: “For me it is impossible not to condemn slavery in whatever form ... I forbid to associate my person in this question . . .” The time of this correspondence was 1852 and 1853.

But there are other proofs of Kossuth’s determined principles.

When he still was interned in Kutahia, Asia Minor, several American politicians and diplomats worked in order to liberate him and his entourage and to make it possible for him to come to the United States. Senator WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD was a well-meaning member of this group. Years before he was instrumental in proposing in the Senate a resolution, condemning the armed intervention of Russia in the Hungarian revolution. During his American tour, Kossuth met him and conferred with him several times. During the Civil War, Seward was President Lincoln’s Secretary of State. On the 16th of Sept., 1864, Kossuth sent a letter to Seward, as to an old benefactor and friend. In this letter there are the following sentences, Kossuth’s own English words:

“It was always my conviction that nothing but the sword can decide between the conflicting principles of freedom and slavery in the United States. The time has come for the bloody but unavoidable arbitration. I pray to God to give his blessing to your endeavor, that the curse and stain of slavery be forever removed from your country, and the democratic principle shall not be found wanting in the trial to which we see it exposed.”

A few years ago 35 letters of Kossuth were sold in England at an auction. These letters were written to a certain W. G. LANGDON during the years of the American Civil War. These letters have been and are in private possession and so far we know only that Kossuth writes in them about the Civil Wart and President Lincoln. It is possible that when these letters will be published some day, we will know more about Kossuth’s opinion about the American struggle and its tragic leader.

There is one more question about the connection of Lincoln and Kossuth which probably will be explained in the future: what debt, if any, Lincoln, the orator owes to the orator Kossuth in drafting the text of his deservedly world-famous Gettysburg speech? (The one hundreth anniversary of this speech was on the 19th of November, 1963.) The final sentence of the speech is: "That government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Today it is certain that this was not an original thought of Lincoln, but is rather a quotation, or an old, fairly familiar phrase or proverb. Hungarians are interested in this phrase because Kossuth emphasized the same thought already in 1852, on the 6th of February when he spoke before the State Legislature of Ohio in Columbus. (The Kossuth quotation is on the bronze tablet which was placed in the vestibule of the City Hall of Columbus, by the Hungarians of the city.)

These are Kossuth’s words:

“The spirit of our age is democracy. All for the people and all by the people. Nothing about the people without the people: that is democracy.”) Kossuth’s original manuscript with his own erasures and corrections is in the state archives of Ohio.)

Did Lincoln quote Kossuth or someone else?

The selected English speeches of Kossuth were published in 1854, nine years before the Gettysburg speech. The Columbus speech, with the above quotation, is in it. Lincoln, the orator, very probably studied the speech of Kossuth, who was justly regarded as one of the most outstanding orators of the era. He might have encountered the phrase there. However, other orators also employed the same prase, with slight variations, for instance THEODORE PARKER, one of the renowned Protestant clergymen of the country, who on the 4th of July, 1858, more than five years before the Gettysburg speech, in Boston said: “Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, for all the people, by all the people.” Among Lincoln’s books there were Parker volumes and in one of them, Lincoln underscored the quoted words.

Parker used these words a few times even before 1858. Once in 1854, that is after Kossuth and twice in 1850, that is before Kossuth. In 1853 JOEL PARKER uttered substantially the same words before the Constitutional Assembly of the State of Massachusetts. In May, 1830 in a town named Olten, in Switzerland one of the speakers used this very same thought, but a few months before this event we find the same concept in one of the speeches of DANIEL WEBSTER. The same idea was also expressed by Chief Justice JOHN MARSHALL already in 1819. Some people tried to trace the origin of the phrase back to the preface of the Wyclif-Hereford English Bible translation (1383) but this assertion is already refuted. Lincoln himself was accused by some with plagiarism on account of this sentence. Others maintain even today that he was the originator of it, although Lincoln himself never asserted this. It seems probable that Kossuth also repeated it as a quotation or a repetition of an old by-word, which fits in every speech with democratic undertones.

It is certain however, that these two great men of humanity were spiritual brothers in confessing and practicing the faith of democracy.

CHAPTER XII

The Land of Unlimited Possibilities

In the land of unlimited possibilities it was possible even for Hungarians to perform achievements which are worthy to be related to later generations. “Ad seros transmitter nepotes” — as STEPHEN PARMENIUS BUDAEUS,

and can not be reproduced in any way without permission.)

the young Hungarian Oxford scholar, one of the foremost Latin poets of his time wrote in his long poem: “Carmen Epibatikon” in flawless hexameters. (London, 1582.)

It was possible for this Hungarian Calvinist to achieve fame as a Latin poet in England. When SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT organized his five ship expedition to New Foundland, he asked Parmenius to join them. He was charged “to record in the Latin tongue the gests and things worthy of remembrance happening in this discovery, to the honour of our nation, the same being adorned with the eloquent style of this orator and rare poet of our time”— as Edward Hayes, captain of one of the ships “Golden Hind” relates in his eyewitness description.

Parmenius wrote the “Carmen Epibatikon” before this short expedition which took place in 1583. He was eager to participate in the adventure which might bear farreaching historical consequences. It was possible for him to hope that in the new world a new golden age might dawn for humanity:

“Quod si parva loquor, nec adhue fortasse fatenda est Aurea in hoc iterum nostro gens vivere mundo,

Quid vetat ignotis ut possit surgere terris?”

(But if I may not yet assert that this golden age has come again in our world, what is there to prevent its emergence in lands unknown?)

Humanity’s universal yearning for democracy found expression in his words when he envisions a land where “ a man’s value will not be measured by birth, nor the people’s liberty crushed by riches . . .”

“Non illic generi virtus, opibusque premetur Libertás populi . . .”

He spent about three weeks in America and thus became the first Hungarian to set his foot on the new world’s soil. He did not want its possible riches. On the return trip his ship, the 120 ton “Delight” went down in a storm August 28, 1583. Shakespeare was a young struggling married man of 19 at that time.

In about 200 years after Parmenius it became possible for Hungáriánál even to die for “a new nation, conceived in liberty” and dreamed of by thef long dead Parmenius. A staunch Calvinist soldier, MICHAEL DE KOWATS (1724-1779) offered his services to the cause of the United States, also wrote his first letter to BENJAMIN FRANKLIN in impeccable Latin, January 13, 1777 in France. He starts his letter with the quotation: “Aurea libertás fulvo non venditur auro” — “Golden liberty can not be purchased with yellow gold”. He offered himself without reserve, ready to die if needs be. (“Totum me fidelissime sacrificaturum . . . Jugi cum obsequio vivam et moriar.”) And closed his letter with these words: “Fidelissimus ad mortem” — faithful unto death. He was about 55 when being second in command of the Pulaski Legion, an English bullet killed him in a skirmish before Charleston, S. C., May 11, 1779. His words: “Fidelissimus ad mortem ’’became the motto of American Hungarians.

Several decades later it became possible that one single Hungarian stirred the conscience of the United States and through it that of the world. It was possible that the poor Hungarian exile, LOUIS KOSSUTH (1802-1894) addressed the Congress of the United States in 1852, an honor accorded before him to only one foreigner, Lafayette.

It was possible that eleven years before the Gettysburg speech of Lincoln this same exiled Hungarian summed up the essence of democracy with these voids: “The spirit of our age is democracy. All for the people and by all the people. Nothing about the people without the people: that is democracy, and that is the ruling tendency of the spirit of our age.” (Address before the Ohio Stale Legislature, Columbus, Ohio, February 5, 1852.)

It was possible that this same Hungarian, with true prophetic insight visualized the oneness of freedom of all nations, a doctrine officially accepted by the United States after Second World War. It was possible for him to predict that the time will come when the United Sates and Great Britain will march together, their flags side by side, on the soil of Europe to further the cause of mankind’s freedom.

And it was possible that this same poor exile inspired another President of the United States: JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY (1917-1963) who in his historic speech in Frankfurt, Germany, June 23, 1963 reminded the world that he learned the principle of the oneness of mankind’s liberty from a speech of Louis Kossuth, which he delivered in the late Presidents home town, Boston, April 29, 1852, in historic Faneuil Hall, which is called “the cradle of American liberty.”

These were Kossuth’s memorable words:

“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. So should liberty be. ‘American Liberty’ has much the sound as if you would say ‘American privilege’. 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 . . . Liberty is a principle, exclusiveness is its doom ... A privilege nevek can be lasting.Liberty restricted to one nation never can be sure . . . ‘There is community in mankind’s destiny’. That was the greeting which 1 read on the arch of welcome on the Capitol Hill of Massachusetts. I pray to God that the republic of America would weigh the eternal truth of those words, and: act accordingly.”

In the great Civil War it was possible for hundreds of Hungarians to offer their services and in many cases their lives for the Union. It was possible that out of this small group not less than seven men emerged as generals,