"...to fix the attention of the whole world upon Hungary..."

Lajos Kossuth in the United States, 1851-52

 

An American orator

Almost immediately upon his arrival, the Hungarian guest delivered a series of speeches. He had begun to study the English language seriously as an adult, during the years he spent in prison between 1837 and 1840. "I told them to give me an English Dictionary and Shakespeare." (Kossuth in New England, pp. 106-107.) Reading Shakespeare, together with the English Romantics, left an inerasable mark on Kossuth's English, his vocabulary, his grammatical structures and on his phrasing.
He began to speak English only in exile, at the age of 49, and the celebrated public speaker was often lost for words in private conversation. In the light of this, it is quite remarkable how, even on his arrival in England, but especially during his trip to the United States, he became known and respected as one of the great orators in English of the time.
"I heard him speak for about three quarters of an hour at the legislative banquet of last week," George Stillman Hillard wrote to his friend Francis Lieber on May 8, 1852. Himself a master of rhetoric and an excellent orator, whose occasional addresses "were famous in their day," Hillard was a competent judge of Kossuth's abilities as a public speaker.

That I hold to have been an oratorical achievement of a very high order. He spoke, in all, about two hours, without notes and standing out at full length upon a table. His voice is firm, his manner pleasing and persuasive, and his countenance full of animated expression. His management of his person, his legs especially, was admirable. I can perfectly understand that in his own language he must be a popular orator of the first class. I have no doubt, from what I hear, that he does exert a very fascinating power over all who approach him. He is a man of an Eastern, luxuriant, imaginative & feminine cast and he wins men and especially women, through the sympathies. His charm of his manner is a winning & sort of carressing persuasiveness. This is perfectly consistent with a dash of the theatrical and melodramatic which I think belongs to him. When I first saw him, he was on horseback, and he did not ride remarkably well, and he wore a shewy velvet coat, and altogether he looked to me like a troubadour more than a hero and that he ought to have had a harp by his side, instead of a sword.

For his most important speeches Kossuth prepared a draft, sometimes with the help of a native English speaker or a Hungarian who spoke the language well. Nevertheless, about two-thirds of the estimated 600-800 speeches of varying length he delivered in England and the United States by the summer of 1852 were off the cuff and the majority of these, as well as most of the letters he wrote in English, were considered masterpieces of 19th-century English prose. In the next fifty years, books such as The Golden Age of American Oratory (Boston, 1857) and several others quoted long passages from these texts. Fifty-two of his best speeches were published right away under the title Select Speeches of Kossuth (New York, 1854).
Of course not everybody was enthusiastic for the kind of oratory that Kossuth presented. Francis Lieber's critical comments were shared by several of his American contemporaries:

Do you remember what I say in my Character of the Gentleman, on exaggeration? It is both unmanly and ungentlemanly to spout and speak with the eloquence of a fire engine. See what a list of "down-trodden" words we could collect in America. Splendid, meaning now anything not much below par. Magnificent, so common you can hardly use it except you have proved on ten previous pages that you are not word-drunken. Great means almost distinguished, but not quite. Admirable has become so paltry, that it means 9 letters and no more. Greatest man of the age, means at times Webster, at others Scot [Sir Walter Scott], or Kossuth or Wellington, or Barnam [P .T. Barnum], or Jenny Lind, or Lola [Montez]-man, intellect or woman. Kossuth is the greatest orator of the age, if not of any age-my own eyes have seen this in print. Oh, it is beastly. Cows can roar too, and the articulated roar is the most brutal of the two. (Columbia, S.C., January 8, 1852)

Political realities

After the ceremonial procession in New York, similar receptions awaited Kossuth in the streets of Philadelphia and Baltimore, but by the time he reached Washington, D.C., the enthusiasm of official America had waned. From the start, the Austrian minister, Johann Hülsemann, made every effort to block Kossuth's official "stately" reception and registered a protest with President Millard Fillmore against the New York reception of the Hungarian rebel and against his being addressed as Governor. Washington politicians were divided in their opinion about the Hungarian guest's actual political weight. Fillmore undertook to receive Kossuth, though he viewed his mission as one of "having dangerous tendencies if encouraged beyond the limits of sympathy," and requested that Kossuth refrain from making an embarrassing political speech. (Quoted by Komlos, p. 101)
When Secretary of State Daniel Webster assured his President that Kossuth would not hold a speech in the White House, the date for the presentation was set for New Year's Eve, 1852.
Kossuth failed to keep his word. In a speech to the President and his government, he made a long list of the grievances that had brought him to the United States. America must intervene to guarantee non-intervention by Austria and Russia in Hungary's affairs, he said, bringing up the favours his hosts had shown him-securing his release from internment, his invitation to Washington, D.C., and his reception by the President-as evidence of commitment to intervention. However, Fillmore's frosty reply left no one in doubt about the political realities of the day: if Kossuth succeeded in achieving independence for his nation without American help, then the President would hail it as a victory for human rights in the Old World. "As an individual I sympathize with you in your brave struggle for the independence and freedom of your native land... my own views, as the chief magistrate of this union, are fully and freely expressed in my recent message to Congress." Fillmore referred to his State of the Union address where he declared in no uncertain terms: "No individuals have the right to hazard the peace of the country, or to violate its laws upon vague notions of altering or reforming governments in other states..." (Quoted by Komlos, pp. 102-103)
In sharp contrast with the President, Congress was less unequivocal in its view of Kossuth. On January 7, 1851 the House of Representatives welcomed their guest by inviting him to address the assembly. Such distinguished treatment had earlier been accorded only to one person, the French hero of the American Revolutionary Army, the Marquis de Lafayette. On the same evening, the Congress gave a banquet in Kossuth's honour in the National Hotel, which was attended by over 250 guests. On this occasion Webster, who was committed to the Hungarian cause, delivered two speeches: first a cautious one, and then a somewhat more heated one in conclusion. He hailed Hungarian independence and self-determination, at the same time greeting Hungary's separate national place among the European nations. Few paid any attention to the cautious version, but everyone seemed to understand the heated one. The newspapers welcomed it as evidence of official support for the Hungarian cause, while the Austrian representative handed an ultimatum to President Fillmore: if Secretary Webster was allowed to remain in office, he would go home and diplomatic relations between the two countries would be suspended. In any case, Hülsemann left Washington and did not return for a full year.
It was all in vain, though: there was no real political commitment behind Webster's rhetoric. The duplicity shown by the great powers towards Hungary's successive struggles for independence was a tragic and recurrent experience in Hungarian history: it was to be repeated in 1956.