page_title: Lajos Kossuth
section_title: Escape and tour of Britain and United States
hierarchical_section_title: Lajos Kossuth / Escape and tour of Britain and United States
caption_attribution_description: Magyar: Kossuth Lajos fényképe
context_page_description: Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva was a Hungarian nobleman, lawyer, journalist, politician, statesman and Governor-President of the Kingdom of Hungary during the revolution of 1848–49.
  With the help of his talent in oratory in political debates and public speeches, Kossuth emerged from a poor gentry family into regent-president of Kingdom of Hungary. As the influential contemporary American journalist Horace Greeley said of Kossuth: "Among the orators, patriots, statesmen, exiles, he has, living or dead, no superior."
  Kossuth's powerful English and American speeches so impressed and touched the famous contemporary American orator Daniel Webster, that he wrote a book about Kossuth's life. He was widely honoured during his lifetime, including in Great Britain and the United States, as a freedom fighter and bellwether of democracy in Europe. Kossuth's bronze bust can be found in the United States Capitol with the inscription: Father of Hungarian Democracy, Hungarian Statesman, Freedom Fighter, 1848–1849.
context_section_description: 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, supported by the British, refused, notwithstanding the threats of the allied emperors, to surrender him and other fugitives to Austria. 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 (present-day Bratislava); 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 US Congress approved having Kossuth come there, and on 1 September 1851, he boarded the ship USS Mississippi at Smyrna (Izmir), Turkey with his family and fifty exiled followers. 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. The Magyar asked to leave the Mississippi at Gibraltar.
caption: Photo of Kossuth.
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