The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1984 (11. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1984-03-01 / 3. szám
The New Jersey AMCRICAN-HUNGARIAN A Special Section for the American-Hungarian Community in New Jersey Kossuth ’s Speech at Jersey City Was His "Swan Song”: WHY DID KOSSUTH’S MISSION TO AMERICA FAIL? During the past 132 years, many Hungarian scholars have pondered over this question. What they seem to have come up with in common, is that Kossuth’s “principle of intervention for non-intervention” was an idea whose time had not yet come and that the emotional issue of slavery in the United States did him in. Accordingly, it is not unreasonable to assume that Kossuth had come to the United States at the wrong time to get what he had hoped for: an Anglo-American Alliance to support his "sacred cause” with money, arms, and military intervention in the event any European power would intervene on behalf of Austria in a renewed Hungarian War of Independence. Congress, of course, rejected this proposal with great indignation. So did England. But, ironically, both nations adopted the concept years later as an adjunct of their foreign policies, and it is being practiced by both to this very day! From the moment the 45-year-old. Hungarian “Champion of Liberty” arrived at Staten Island on December 4. 1851. to begin his v isit to and tour of America, he was accorded an unprecedented hero's welcome by the American people. He was inv ited to the White House by President Millard Fillmore, who had arranged for his release from Turkish detention, and was received by both houses of Congress. He delivered several hundred speeches during the length of his tour, was "lionised" by the media, and was wined-and-dined by the nation's elite. Yet Louis Kossuth, the “Idol of America", failed to retain his credibility by the time his visit had ended. He became the victim of a deliberately orchestrated, “smear campaign"! By the time Congress had authorized President Fillmore to get Kossuth out of Turkey and bring him to the United States, it was already beginning to become a house divided over the question of slavery. The question had also begun to heat up as a major public issue. Consequently, when Kossuth refrained from revealing his ow n position on the volatile subject in his speeches, he antagonized both the abolitionist and pro-slavery factions. As a result, both factions targeted Kossuth for discreditation. They succeeded and his mission was doomed. So was Kossuth’s “sacred cause” of “Freedom for Hungary”! March. 1984 Louis Kossuth (Daguerreotype, original in Chicago Historical Society.) By the time Kossuth visited New Jersey on April 21, 1852 (Trenton and Jersey City) and on April 24,1852(Newark), he already knew that his mission had failed. Perhaps, that is why he opened his Jersey City speech with the following words: “ There are some, who with great satisfaction to despots and their civil and religious confederates, have attempted to lower my sacred mission. Oh! / could tell stories about that, curious and strange: but it is better not to speak about it now . . . Still, it is sorrowful to see that not even such a cause, as that which / humbly plead, can escape being dragged down insultingly into the mud!" About two months later (July 14, 1852), Louis Kossuth left America a very unhappy man to live out the rest of his life in lonely exile. Meanwhile, “Freedom for Hungary” had been sacrificed on the altar of American politics! Page 9
