page_title: Lajos Kossuth
section_title: United States
hierarchical_section_title: Lajos Kossuth / Escape and tour of Britain and United States / United States
caption_attribution_description: English: Louis Kossuth's handwritten application for admission to the Cincinnati 133 Masonic Lodge. Magyar: Kossuth Lajos felvételi kérelme a Cincinnati 133. páholyba.
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: From Britain Kossuth went to the United States of America. In early 1852, Kossuth, accompanied by his wife, Ferenc and Theresa Pulszky, toured the American Midwest, South, and New England. Kossuth was the second foreigner after the Marquis de Lafayette to address the Joint Meeting of the United States Congress. He gave a speech before the Ohio State Legislature on February 1852 that probably influenced Lincoln by his Gettysburg Address: "The spirit of our age is Democracy. All for the people, and all by the people. Nothing about the people without the people - That is Democracy! […]" On 6 December 1851, this revolutionary hero arrived in New York to a reception that only Washington and Lafayette had received before.
  The report of The Sun about the arrival of Kossuth in New York:
  Thus immediately previous to the Christmas of 1851 New York city underwent a period of Kossuth mania, and it affected the holiday presents. Every New Year's gift associated itself in some designation with Kossuth and Hungary. Restaurants abounded with Hungarian goulash, a savory dish of boiled beef and vegetables, strongly infused with red peppers; and there were Kossuth cravats (formidable bands of satin or silk wound around the neck, with ends liberally folded over the shirt front), Kossuth pipes, Kossuth umbrellas, Kossuth belts and buckles, Kossuth purses, Kossuth jackets, and Kossuth braid and tassels for wearing apparel......The American Museum on Broadway "was literally covered with paintings and flags. One, a portrait of Kossuth, in the folds of Hungarian and American flags, with the words at the bottom: 'Kossuth, the Washington of Hungary.'
  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.
  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, IL., 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 noninterference 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.
  Kossuth ruined all chances for backing when he openly recommended to German Americans they should choose Franklin Pierce for President. The gaffe brought him back to London in July 1852.
  
  Early the next year, he sent Ferenc Pulszky to meet with Pierce to obtain support for intervention in Europe. Pulszky was to also meet in secret with Lt. William Nelson USN and make plans for an expedition against Haiti and Santo Domingo. The plot ended with the failure of Milanese revolution, and Kossuth made no further efforts to win backing from the United States.
caption: Kossuth's admission to Freemason Grand Lodge of Cincinnati, USA, 1852 (Manuscript from University of Szeged[47])
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