was attacked by Londoners due to the brutal suppression of Hungarian revolution. Plaque in London, Park Street in Southwark Kossuth's time in power was at an end. A solitary fugitive, he crossed the
Ottoman frontier. He was hospitably received by the Ottoman authorities, who were supported by the
British. The Ottomans refused to surrender him and other fugitives to Austria, notwithstanding the threats of the allied emperors. In January 1850, he was removed from
Vidin, where he had been kept under house arrest, to
Shumen, and thence to
Kütahya in
Asia Minor. There, he was joined by his children, who had been confined at Pressburg; his wife (a price had been set on her head) had joined him earlier, having escaped in disguise. On 10 August 1851 the release of Kossuth was decided by the
Sublime Porte, in spite of threats by Austria and Russia. The
United States Congress approved having Kossuth come there, and on 1 September 1851, he boarded the ship
USS Mississippi at
Smyrna, with his family and fifty exiled followers. The Hungarian asked the crew of
Mississippi to leave the shipboard at
Gibraltar. During his journey on board the American frigate Mississippi on his way to
London, an enormous
French crowd waited to welcome Kossuth at the port of
Marseille. However the French authorities did not allow the dangerous revolutionary to come ashore. At Marseille, Kossuth sought permission to travel through
France to
England, but Prince-President
Louis Napoleon denied the request. Kossuth protested publicly, and officials saw that as a blatant disregard for the neutral position of the
United States.
Great Britain On 23 October, Kossuth landed at
Southampton and spent three weeks in England, where he was generally feted. After his arrival, the press characterized the atmosphere of the streets of London as this: "It had seemed like a coronation day of Kings". Contemporary reports noticed: "Trafalgar Square was 'black with people' and Nelson's Monument peopled 'up to the fluted shaft.'" Addresses were presented to him at Southampton,
Birmingham and other towns; he was officially entertained by the
Lord Mayor of the City of London; at each place, he spoke eloquently in English for the Hungarian cause; and he indirectly caused
Queen Victoria to stretch the limits of her constitutional power over her Ministers to avoid embarrassment and eventually helped cause the fall of the government in power. Having learned English during an earlier political imprisonment with the aid of a volume of
Shakespeare, his spoken English was "wonderfully archaic" and theatrical.
The Times, generally cool towards the revolutionaries of 1848 in general and Kossuth in particular, nevertheless reported that his speeches were "clear" and that a three-hour talk was not unusual for him; and also, that if he was occasionally overcome by emotion when describing the defeat of Hungarian aspirations, "it did not at all reduce his effectiveness". At Southampton, he was greeted by a crowd of thousands outside the Mayor's balcony, who presented him with a flag of the Hungarian Republic. The
City of London Corporation accompanied him in procession through the city, and the way to the
Guildhall was lined by thousands of cheering people. He went thereafter to
Winchester,
Liverpool,
Manchester and Birmingham; at Birmingham the crowd that gathered to see him ride under the triumphal arches erected for his visit was described, even by his severest critics, as 75,000 individuals. Despite efforts by some British politicians to limit public enthusiasm, Kossuth’s visit attracted large crowds and popular support. When
The Times tried to fiercely attack Kossuth, the copies of the newspaper were publicly burned in public houses, coffee houses, and in other public spaces throughout the country. Back in London, he addressed the Trades Unions at
Copenhagen Fields in
Islington. Some twelve thousand "respectable artisans" formed a parade at
Russell Square and marched out to meet him. At the Fields themselves, the crowd was enormous; but the hostile newspaper
The Times estimated it conservatively at 25,000, while the
Morning Chronicle described it as 50,000, and the demonstrators themselves 100,000. The
Foreign Secretary,
Lord Palmerston, who had already proved himself a friend of the losing sides in several of the failed revolutions of 1848, was determined to receive him at his country house,
Broadlands. The Cabinet had to vote to prevent it; Victoria reputedly was so incensed by the possibility of her Foreign Secretary supporting an outspoken republican that she asked the Prime Minister,
Lord John Russell for Palmerston's resignation, but Russell claimed that such a dismissal would be drastically unpopular at that time and over that issue. When Palmerston upped the ante by receiving at his house, instead of Kossuth, a delegation of Trade Unionists from Islington and
Finsbury and listened sympathetically as they read an address that praised Kossuth and declared the Emperors of Austria and Russia "despots, tyrants and odious assassins", it was noted as a mark of indifference to royal displeasure. That, together with Palmerston's support of Louis Napoleon, eventually caused the
Russell government to fall. Kossuth’s activities coincided with growing anti-Austrian sentiment in Britain, when Austrian general
Julius Jacob von Haynau was recognized on the street, he was attacked by British draymen on his journey in England. In 1856, Kossuth toured
Scotland extensively, giving lectures in major cities and small towns alike. In addition, the indignation that he aroused against
Russian policy had much to do with the strong anti-Russian feeling, which made the
Crimean War possible. During the Crimean War, the activism of Kossuth also intensified in London, but since Austria did not side with Russia, there was no chance of Hungarian independence being achieved with Anglo-French military help. In the following years, Kossuth hoped that the conflicts between the great powers would allow the liberation of Hungary after all, and so he contacted the French Emperor Napoleon III. When Napoleon III and the Prime Minister of Sardinia,
Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, promised to help liberate Hungary in the run-up to the
Franco-Sardinian-Austrian war of 1859, Lajos Kossuth founded the Hungarian National Directorate with László Teleki and György Klapka and began to organise the Hungarian Legion. Following Napoleon III's unexpected peace with Austria after his brilliant victory at
Solferino, Kossuth sought to link the liberation of Hungary more and more clearly to the movement of the peoples fighting for their independence. However,
Giuseppe Garibaldi's invasion of
Sicily in 1860 raised new hopes. Many Hungarians fought among his
Redshirts, and his successes could have led to another Italo-Austrian war. In the event, the Hungarian Legion was re-established, and Kossuth negotiated cooperation with the Italians. But the war was not fought. Although Hungary remained under Austrian rule, the decline of Habsburg power increasingly forced compromise on the Austrian government. Hungarian passive resistance and the foreign activities of the Kossuth group reinforced each other. Kossuth and the émigré movement's armed preparations and negotiations with the great powers, on the other hand, were backed by the political backdrop of a silent and passively resistant country.
United States From Britain Kossuth went to the United States of America aboard the Humboldt postal vessel. He was warmly welcomed since the Congress in a letter inviting him to the country as the 'guest of the nation'. On 6 December 1851, this revolutionary hero arrived in
New York City to a reception that only
Washington and
Lafayette had received before. The mayor of New York City introduced him as "a champion of human progress, an eloquent proclaimer of universal freedom". On the posters and in the news, he appeared as an ambassador of the European nations yearning for freedom and democracy, an implacable opponent of the tyranny embodied by the Habsburgs and the Russian
Romanovs. Like the more than 600 other speeches he has given in America, it as well ended with applause. The report of
The Sun about the arrival of Kossuth in New York: President
Millard Fillmore entertained Kossuth at the
White House on 31 December 1851 and 3 January 1852. The US Congress organized a banquet for Kossuth, which was supported by all political parties. In early 1852, Kossuth, accompanied by his wife, his son Ferenc, and
Theresa Pulszky, toured the American Midwest, South, and
New England. Kossuth was the second foreigner after the Marquis de Lafayette to address a Joint Meeting of the United States Congress. He gave a speech before the
Ohio General Assembly in February 1852 that probably influenced
Lincoln's
Gettysburg Address: "The spirit of our age is Democracy. All for the people, and all by the people. Nothing about the people without the peopleThat is Democracy!..." Kossuth gained widespread popularity and admiration across the continent. Even babies were named after him during his American tour. At the same time, dozens of books, hundreds of pamphlets, articles, and essays, as well as about 250 poems were written to, for, or about him in the 1850s. Queen Victoria had a negative remark about the American version of Kossuth fever too: "the popular Kossuth fever of the time to ignorance of the man in whom they (the Americans) see a second Washington, when the fact is that he is an ambitious and rapacious humbug." There is no evidence that Kossuth ever met Abraham Lincoln, although Lincoln did organize a celebration in Kossuth's honor in
Springfield, Illinois, calling him a "most worthy and distinguished representative of the cause of civil and religious liberty on the continent of Europe". Kossuth believed that by appealing directly to European immigrants in the American heartland that he could rally them behind the cause of a free and democratic Hungary. United States officials feared that Kossuth's efforts to elicit support for a failed revolution were fraught with mischief. He would not denounce
slavery or stand up for the
Catholic Church, and when Kossuth declared George Washington had never intended for the policy of non-interference to serve as constitutional dogma, he caused further defection. Luckily for him, it was unknown then that he entertained a proposal to raise 1,500 mercenaries, who would overthrow
Haiti with officers from the
US Army and
Navy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson praised Kossuth: "You have earned your own nobility at home. We admit you ad eundem (as they say at College). We admit you to the same degree, without new trial. We suspend all rules before so paramount a merit. You may well sit a doctor in the college of liberty. You have achieved your right to interpret our Washington." However, the issue of slavery was tearing America apart. Kossuth infuriated the
abolitionists by refusing to say anything offensive to the pro-slavery establishment, which, however, did not give him much support. Abolitionists said that Kossuth's "hands off" position regarding
American slavery was unacceptable.
Wm. Lloyd Garrison, on behalf of the
American Anti-Slavery Society, published a pamphlet "exposing the Hungarian as a self-seeking toady." ==London==