Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs Volume I Part 13

"Darkly, sternly, and all alone A spoil--the richest and the last."

Philip's son, a boy nine years of age, was sold into slavery, and the royal race of Ma.s.sasoit was extinct.

As all our information of Carthage and the Punic wars has been transmitted by Roman authors, so our knowledge of Philip and the war of 1675-6, is derived from partial and in some instances prejudiced sources. Yet it is just to say that our ancestors made no concealment of the facts, although the comments of Mather and Hubbard are often strangely barbarous in spirit. And further, we may be certain that our Pilgrim Fathers were true to the light that was in them; and that their memory will grow green with years and blossom through the flight of ages.

If to-day we have seen the bright side of Indian character, contrasted with the few harsh features of the New England colonists, it is that this occasion, while it calls forth feelings of grat.i.tude and reverence for the men and history of the Past may have somewhat of a practical value in the Present and the Future. The men of the forest have not disappeared entirely, though

"They waste--they shrink away; And fast we follow, as they go Towards the setting day."

And if in the Providence of G.o.d the race is soon to be extinct, let not injustice, oppression, or war, increase their woes or hasten their decay.

XVIII LOUIS KOSSUTH*

When Louis Kossuth landed in New York, December 5, 1851, he was not an unknown personage. He and his native land had been made known to the people of the United States by the Revolution of 1848 and the contest of 1849 for the independence of Hungary. Until those events occurred, Hungary was only a marked spot on the map of Europe, and the name of Kossuth, as a leader in industrial and social progress, had not been written or spoken on this side of the Atlantic; but in the year 1851 there was no other person of a foreign race and language of whose name and career as much was known.

There was no exaggeration in Mr. Emerson's words of address to Kossuth: "You have got your story told in every palace, and log hut, and prairie camp throughout this continent."

From the first Kossuth recognized a special interest in the commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts. This interest was due in part to the history of the State, from which he drew many lessons of instruction and much confidence that personal liberty and the independence and sovereignty of states would become universal possessions. Beyond these considerations the invitation to him from Ma.s.sachusetts was made January 8, 1852,--among the first of the States of the Union.

In my annual address to the Legislature, delivered the 15th of January, I said: "Your action will be regarded as an expression of the sympathy of Ma.s.sachusetts for the distinguished exile, and for the cause of European liberty, which he so truly represents. The common sentiment of America is on the side of const.i.tutional governments."

The resolutions of the Legislature and the letter of the Governor were presented to Kossuth at Pittsburg, Pa., January 26, by Hon. Erastus Hopkins, then a member of the House of Representatives.

Kossuth's first speech in New England was made at New Haven, Thursday, April 22. From what he there said some inferences may be drawn as to his religious opinions and the basis on which, to him, the principles of freedom seemed to rest:

"I know that there is one G.o.d in Heaven, the Father of all humanity, and Heaven is therefore one. I know that there is one sun in the sky, which gives light to all the world. As there is unity in G.o.d, and unity in the light, so is there unity in the principles of freedom."

Upon his arrival in Boston, April 27, 1852, I met with him on the steps of the State House, greeting him with the following speech:

"Governor Kossuth: As the voice of the Legislature and people of Ma.s.sachusetts, I welcome you to this capitol to-day.

"Your presence brings before us our own past, bitter in its experience, but glorious in its history. We once had apostles of liberty on whose heads a price was set, who were hunted by tyranny from their homes, and threatened with expulsion from civilized life. That day of oppression and anxiety with us is ended. It introduced a contest for human rights, whose results on this continent you have seen, in the extent, character and power of the American republic.

"The people of Ma.s.sachusetts, inspired by their early history and animated by the impulses of their hearts, greet you as one who has n.o.bly served and suffered in the cause of individual freedom and the rights of states. Nor will their admiration be limited by any consideration arising from the fate of your country, or the failure of the patriotic hopes with which it was inspired.

"Liberty can never die. The generations of men appear and pa.s.s away, but the principles and aspirations of their nature are immortal.

"Despotism is of time. It contains within itself the elements and the necessity of decay and death.

"Fifty years of your eventful life are past; but take courage, sir, in the belief that, in the providence of G.o.d, the moment is near when the light of freedom shall penetrate the darkness of European despotism.

Then shall your own Hungary welcome you to her fields and mountains, to her homes and heart; and we will welcome Hungary to the family of republican, const.i.tutional, sovereign states.

"In the name of the people, I tender to you the hospitalities of a commonwealth founded by Exiles and Pilgrims."

To this welcome to the capitol of Ma.s.sachusetts, Kossuth replied as follows:

"I feel deeply sensible of the immense benefit which a happy and prosperous people has conferred upon an unfortunate people. Moments like the present can only be felt, not spoken. I feel a deep emotion, sir. I am not ashamed of it. Allow me to say that, in taking that hand, the hand of the people of Ma.s.sachusetts, and having listened in your voice to the sentiments and feelings of the people of Ma.s.sachusetts, I indeed cannot forbear to believe that humanity has arrived at a great turning point in its destinies, because such a sight was never yet seen on earth.

"Conquerors, triumphant and proud of success, confer honors and glory on a poor exile, having nothing to speak for him but his misfortunes.

"Sir, the spirit of liberty is lasting; liberty cannot die, because it has become the common sentiment of all humanity. The spirit of liberty takes itself wings,--you are happy to be the first-born son of that spirit; but we accept our condition just to be one of its martyrs; and I look with hope, I look with confidence, into the future, because that spirit which prepared for the poor exile the present day will be recorded in the records of history, and will mark the destiny of coming centuries. I cannot speak further. I am proud to have your hands in mine.

"And be sure, sir, and let your generous people be sure of it, that, whatever be our future destiny, we shall never, in our struggles and misfortunes and adversities, we shall never forget the generous Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, and the generous people of Ma.s.sachusetts, and they shall never have reason to regret that we have been honored in this immense nation. G.o.d Almighty bless you, sir, and bless you all!

"I take these honors proudly, because I take them not for myself, but in the name of my people, in whose name I express my most humble, my eternal thanks."

Kossuth's visit to New England was confined, I think, to the States of Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut. He spoke at Hartford, at Springfield, Northampton, Worcester, Lynn, Salem, Lowell, Fall River, Plymouth, Lexington and Concord, received everywhere by enormous crowds, and rousing everywhere an unexampled enthusiasm.

During his stay in Ma.s.sachusetts he was introduced to audiences by distinguished men, some of whom had achieved no inconsiderable reputation as orators, and in most instances they were stimulated and advanced rather then dwarfed by the presence of one whose powers were far above the reach of ordinary speakers. Of these it is not invidious to mention Emerson, Banks, Burlingame, Hopkins and Kellogg.

Of the many who spoke in the presence of Kossuth there was no one whose words were more acceptable than were those of the venerable Josiah Quincy. He was then eighty years of age. At the banquet in Faneuil Hall he made a ten minutes' speech that glowed with the fire of youth.

Its spirit can be exhibited in a quotation of two short sentences: "Age chills the feelings, and renders the heart cold; but I have still feeling enough left to say to the hero of the Old World, Welcome to the liberty of the New! I can say to the hero of Hungarian liberty, Welcome to the peace and happiness of our western home." At the commencement of his speech Kossuth said: "Before all, let me express a word of veneration and thanks to that venerable gentleman" (pointing to Mr. Quincy). "Sir, I believe when you spoke of age cooling the hearts of men, you spoke the truth in respect to ordinary men, but you did yourself injustice. The common excitement and warm blood of youth pa.s.s away; but the heart of the wise man, the older it grows the warmer it feels." It is difficult to imagine a more graceful impromptu recognition of words of praise.

Kossuth's speech at Bunker Hill, more than his other speeches in New England, bears marks of its Oriental origin. Pointing to the monument he said: "My voice shrinks from the task to mingle with the awful pathos of that majestic orator. Silent like the grave, and yet melodious like the song of immortality upon the lips of cherubim, . . .

and thus it speaks: 'The day I commemorate is the rod with which the hand of the Lord has opened the well of liberty. Its waters will flow; every new drop of martyr blood will increase the tide; it will overflow or break through. Bow, and adore, and hope.'" In the course of his remarks he mentioned Gridley, Pollard, Knowlton and Warren, but he appears not to have heard of Putnam and Prescott.

At Lexington he said he was inclined to smile at the controversy with Concord, declaring that it was immaterial whether the fire of the British was first returned at Lexington or Concord; that its was immaterial whether those who fell at Lexington were "butchered martyrs, or victims of a battle-field."

Kossuth was presented to Amariah Preston, aged ninety-four years, and to Abijah Harrington, aged ninety-one years, veterans of the Revolutionary war, and to Jonathan Harrington, then ninety-four years of age, and the only survivor in Lexington of the action of April 19, 1775.

At Concord, Emerson said to the exile: "There is nothing accidental in your att.i.tude. We have seen that you are organically in that cause you plead. The man of freedom, you are also the man of fate. You do not elect, but you are elected by G.o.d and your genius to your task. We do not, therefore, affect to thank you."

In his reply Kossuth appealed to Emerson to give to him and to his cause the aid of his philosophical a.n.a.lysis, and to impress the conviction upon the public mind that the Revolution, of which Concord was the preface, was full of a higher destiny,--of a destiny as broad as the world, as broad as humanity itself.

In that speech he antic.i.p.ated Matthew Arnold in the remark, "One thing I may own, that it is, indeed, true, everything good has yet been in the minority; still mankind went on, and in going on to that destiny the Almighty designed, when all good will not be confined to the minority, but will prevail amongst all mankind." His speech at Concord was not of his best, and there are indications that his estimate of Emerson's supremacy as a philosopher and thinker subjected him to a degree of restraint which he could not overcome.

Only once, as far as I know, did Kossuth speak of himself, except as the chosen and legitimate representative of down-trodden Hungary, and that was in his parting speech in Faneuil Hall, May 14, 1852: "Some take me here for a visionary. Curious, indeed, if that man who, a poor son of the people, has abolished an aristocracy of a thousand years old, created a treasury of millions out of nothing, an army out of nothing, and directed a revolution so as to fix the attention of the whole world upon Hungary, and has beaten the old, well-provided power of Austria, and crushed its future by its very fall, and forsaken, abandoned, alone, sustained a struggle against two empires, and made himself in his very exile feared by czars and emperors, and trusted by foreign nations as well as his own,--if that man be a visionary therefor, so much pride I may be excused, that I would like to look face to face into the eyes of a practical man on earth."

In closing so much of my review of Kossuth's sojourn in Ma.s.sachusetts as relates to the incident of his visit to Boston and the neighboring cities and towns, I may be permitted to devote a few lines to my acquaintance with him. To my position as Governor of the State, to the paragraph in my address to the Legislature, to my letter of invitation, and to my speech of welcome from the steps of the State House, he gave much more consideration than was deserved; and on many occasions I received evidences of his friends.h.i.+p and confidence.

I cla.s.s Kossuth among the small number of great men, whether he be cla.s.sed among orators, philosophers, students of history and government, or as an advocate of the largest range of individual freedom that is consistent with the good order of society.

The great orators have appeared and the great orations have been delivered in revolutionary periods; and this has been ill.u.s.trated most strikingly when states have been menaced by the fear of transition from a const.i.tution of freedom to a government of tyranny. Of the great orations of this cla.s.s, the most significant are the orations of Demosthenes in behalf of the imperiled liberties of Greece, and the orations of Cicero in defence of his character and of his conduct in the public service, and in denunciation of the crimes by which the Republic of Rome was transformed into the Empire of the Caesars. In modern times attention may be directed to the speech of James Otis on the Writs of a.s.sistance, to Burke's speech on Conciliation with America, to Fisher Ames' speech on the Jay Treaty, and to Webster's speech on Nullification.

In all these speeches, the ancient and modern alike, with the exception of the speech of Fisher Ames, the inspiring, the controlling sentiment is the sentiment of patriotism,--the claim to continued independence and sovereignty in an existing condition, and the claim to independence and sovereignty on the part of an aspiring people.

Burke was animated by a sense of patriotic duty to Britain and by a sense of justice to her colonies in America. Fisher Ames'

argumentative speech was an appeal to the sense of justice of the House of Representatives.

Of the speeches to which reference has been made, it is to be said that the circ.u.mstances in which they had their origin were local, although they may have embraced the affairs of an empire. In the main, the considerations advanced were temporary in their relations to the affairs of mankind. In its very nature patriotism is local, and the considerations by which the sentiment is stimulated relate usually to the conditions and events in the country where the sentiment is evolved. Moreover, a manifestation of the sentiment of patriotism in one people is accompanied usually with a degree of hostility to some other community or nation, and in its excesses it often fosters a disregard for the just rights of others. Nor is the sentiment or sense of justice usually universal in its application. As it is manifested in individuals and communities, it too often embodies a degree of selfishness, from which neither states nor individuals are exempt.

In like manner the words "freedom" and "liberty," in their application, have been limited to cla.s.ses and castes, and to individual communities and states. The earliest and best expression of the universality of the idea of liberty belongs to America, but in America even its practical realization is a recent event. Previous to the nineteenth century, America was the only land in which it was possible to found a state freed from the domination of the church, or to establish a church free from the domination of the state; and in one half of the American continent this degree of freedom does not exist even now, when we approach the twentieth century.

Of the great orators of the world, it was Louis Kossuth who first gave to the word "liberty" the largest possible signification. Burke approached the idea, but he seemed not to comprehend its universality.

In his oration on Conciliation with America he said: "In Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast mult.i.tude of slaves. When this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing, then, that freedom as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks among them like something that is more n.o.ble and liberal."

Although Burke speaks of countries where freedom was a common blessing, it is apparent that the expression was a figure of speech rather than a statement of existing facts. Kossuth came to the Western World, not as the exponent merely of the sufferings and wrongs endured by the people of Hungary, but he announced and advocated boldly the most advanced theories of individual and national freedom, and of the mutuality of the obligations resting upon states.

Of the many speeches made by Kossuth in the United States, precedence may be given to his speech in Faneuil Hall, April 29, 1852. In that speech he announced in all its fulness his comprehensive idea of liberty: "Cradle of American Liberty! it is a great name; but there is something in it which saddens my heart. You should not say _American liberty._ You should say _Liberty in America._ Liberty should not be either American or European,--it should be just _liberty_. G.o.d is G.o.d. He is neither America's G.o.d nor Europe's G.o.d; he is G.o.d. So should liberty be. 'American liberty' has much the sound as if you would say 'American privilege.' And there is the rub. Look to history, and when your heart saddens at the fact that liberty never yet was lasting in any corner of the world, and in any age, you will find the key of it in the gloomy truth that all who were yet free regarded liberty as their privilege, instead of regarding it as a principle. The nature of every privilege is exclusiveness, that of a principle is communicative. Liberty is a principle,--its community is it security,--exclusiveness is its doom. What is aristocracy? It is exclusive liberty; it is privilege; and aristocracy is doomed, because it is contrary to the destiny and welfare of man.