A Letter from Dr. William Francis Channing to Louis Kossuth

Abstract

IN the spring of 1852 Louis Kossuth, leader of the Hungarian revolution of 1848 and former Governor of the short-lived Hungarian Republic, reached New England on the final stages of what had been a triumphal tour of the northern and middle western states. Not since the Marquis de Lafayette's sentimental journey in 1824-1825 had Americans acclaimed more warmly a European visitor and had expressed such enthusiasm for the cause he represented.' The Kossuth mania or the Kossuth fever contemporaries called this popular enthusiasm.2 Everywhere he went, except in official Washington, which maintained a courteous but correct attitude toward the political exile, Kossuth's dignified manner and Shakespearean eloquence inspired demands that America liberate Hungary from Hapsburg rule. To newly arrived emigrants in the Ohio valley and to zealous reformers in New England the Hungarian patriot symbolized the liberal aspirations -now crushed-of the revolutions of 1848. Then, for a short time, old Europe had shaken off despotic rule and had established, in imitation of America, political regimes expressing the will of the