Fraternity-Testvériség, 1997 (75. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
1997-04-01 / 2. szám
Page 16 TESTVÉRISÉG TRIBUTE TO TWO OUTSTANDING YOUNG MEN ami &$/waÁcwi (£í/rwaUi In conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the Hungarian Reformed Federation of America and the Illinois- Indiana District Meeting, the National Officers organized a wreath laying ceremony at the grave sites of Mr. Tamás Madarasi and Congressman Abraham Lincoln Brick on May 3, 1997 to pay tribute to these remarkable young men who were instrumental in influencing Congress to vote for the charter to be given to the Federation. The Federation was founded in 1896 in Trenton, New Jersey, and operated until 1906 under a state license issued by state of Ohio. Thanks to Mr. Madarasi and Congressman Brick, the Federation received its charter on December 1906, allowing it to operate nationwide. Both young men knew each other well; both were from South Bend, Indiana, and while many differences existed between them (one was a lawyer, the other a simple Hungarian immigrant), they also had many similarities: both were children of parents born to simple stock, both were enthusiastic by nature, both shared their love for Hungarians, and, unfortunately, both died too soon and unexpectedly: Mr. Madarasi (1878-1907), Congressman Brick (1860-1908). Below is Congressman Brick’s speech delivered to Congress in 1907, which speech, from a Hungarian point of view, is unique in the history of the US Congress: Referring to the racial character of this organization alluded to by the gentleman from Iowa, / want to say the following: “They have come to us to better their conditions, and I want to make them feel at home. They are here to swell the stream of our best citizenship, numbering now over a quarter of a million souls. They have come to make this country their permanent dwelling place, to live and abide with us in the truest and most loyal of American sentiment and patriotism. They inhabit every state and territory of the United States, and everywhere have they entered into the very essence of our national spirit, hope and enterprise; and among other things, this organization is founded upon the lively behest of that desire. Why, Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the members of the House: Have you read and pondered over the thrilling story of Hungary’s heroic struggle, during a thousand years, for just such liberty as we possess? An accurate history of Hungarian wars and their heroes would teach even the sons and daughters of the Mayflower and the Concord the awful magnificence of a martyrdom endured by a great people for freedom. These children of a heroic ancestry come to us with all institutions of our civilization implanted in their hearts through twenty generations of turmoil in the pursuit of liberty, they find here. Every Hungarian in this country can look back over the red pages of their fathers’ struggles and trace with boundless pride and satisfaction a strange and startling resemblance between the Hungarian revolution and our own. Under Kossuth, and Bern, and Klapka, and Dembinski, what did they fight for that would make them alien or strange to us? Nothing. They performed unheard of and astonishing deeds with one great idea-the freedom of independence. They alone of all Europe held aloft the blazing torch of liberty with dauntless heart and unshaken hand. They fought with God-like valor for the freedom of the press, a constitution, a ministry and a representative body to govern their own destinies. They fought for equality before the law in all civil and religious affairs-equality in taxation, trial by jury and local self-government. These were the principles of the declaration of independence Kossuth and his followers lived and died for. Don’t you believe that the children of the great Kossuth, the Washington of Hungary; of Klapka, the Wayne of the Magyars, have within their breasts and in the bounding flow of their veins the elements of our most appreciative and liberty-loving, loyal citizenship? Gentlemen, they are here, because they have learned to know, as one of us, our institutions and the American idea taught to them on mother’s knee, in the lives of the Washingtons, the Franklins, and the Hancocks of Hungary. They come here, as Kossuth did, driven out by a tyranny worse than was suffered by us when revolution was conceived and the republic bom. I compare their great names with our own, because struggle is the mother of greatness and makes us all akin. I say it because they have been rocked roughly by the same rude barbarous nurse, because they have been trained to hearts of oak and nerves of steel in the same strenuous war for independence, and for this reason I champion their cause. They have my unbounded sympathy and admiration, because I believe in the cause they have so valiantly fought for, because they came to me with the same hopes and aspirations that I have myself, because I rejoice in the splendid history of their race and the genius of their sons who have enriched the world with the rarest treasures of thought. I sympathize with and admire them, because I know Joseph Eötvös, the friend, intimate and supporter of Kossuth- poet, writer and statesman-who more than any other
