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The World’s Famous Orations, Vol. 9
Bryant
His Welcome to Kossuth*
(1851)
But it is not merely or principally for their personal qualities that we honor them; we honor them for the cause in which they failed so gloriously. Great issues hang upon that cause, and great interests of mankind are crushed by its downfall. I was on the continent of Europe when the treason of Görgey laid Hungary boundat the feet of the Tsar. Europe was at that time in the midst of the reaction; the ebb-tide was rushing violently back, sweeping all that the friends of freedom had planned into the black bosom of the deep. In France the liberty of the Press was extinct—Paris in a state of siege—the soldiery of that Republic had just quenched in blood the freedom of Rome—Austria had suppressed liberty in northern Italy—absolutism was restored in Russia, along the Rhine, and in the towns and villages of Wurtemberg and Bavaria, troops withdrawn from the barracks and garrisons filled the streets and kept the inhabitants quiet with the bayonet at their breast. Hungary at that moment alone upheld, and upheld with a firm hand and dauntless heart, the blazing torch of liberty. To Hungary were turned the eyes, to Hungary clung the hopes of all who did not despair of the freedom of Europe.
I recollect that while the armies of Russia were moving like a tempest from the North upon the Hungarian host, the progress of events was watched with the deepest solicitude by the people of Germany. I was at that time in Munich, the splendid capital of Bavaria. The Germans seemed for the time to have put off their usual character, and scrambled for the daily prints, wet from the press, with such eagerness that I almost thought myself in America. The news of the catastrophe at last arrived; Görgey had betrayed the cause of Hungary and yielded tothe demands of the Russians. Immediately a funeral gloom settled like a noonday darkness upon the city. I heard the muttered exclamations of the people, "It is all over—the last hope of European liberty is gone."
Russia did not misjudge. If she had allowed Hungary to become independent, or free, the reaction in favor of absolutism had been incomplete; there would have been one perilous example of successful resistance to despotism—in one corner of Europe a flame would have been kept alive, at which the other nations might have rekindled, among themselves, the light of liberty. Hungary was subdued; but does anyone who hears me believe that the present state of things in Europe will last? The despots themselves fear that it will not; and made cruel by their fears, are heaping chain on chain around the limbs of their subjects.
They are hastening the event they dread. Every added shackle galls, into a more fiery impotence, those who wear them. I look with mingling hope and horror to the day—a day bloodier, perhaps, than we have yet seen—when the exasperated nations shall snap their chains and start to their feet. It may well be that Hungary, made less patient of the yoke by the remembrance of her own many and glorious struggles for independence, and better fitted than other nations, by the peculiar structure of her institutions, for founding the liberty of her citizens on a rational basis, will take thelead. In that glorious and hazardous enterprise, in that hour of care, need, and peril, I hope she will be cheered and strengthened with aid from this side of the Atlantic; aid given not with the stinted hand, not with a cowardly and selfish apprehension, lest we should not err on the safe side—wisely, if you please. I care not with how broad a regard to the future, but in large, generous, effective measure.
And you, our guest, fearless, eloquent, large of heart and mind, whose one thought is the salvation of oppressed Hungary, unfortunate but undiscouraged, struck down in the battle of liberty, but great in defeat, and gathering strength for future triumphs, receive this at our hands, that in this great attempt of man to repossess himself of the rights which God gave him, tho the strife be waged under a distant belt of longitude, and with the mightiest despotism of the world, the Press of America takes part with you and your countrymen. I give you—"LOUIS KOSSUTH."
*Delivered at the banquet given by the Press of New York to Kossuth on December 15, 1851, Bryant presiding.
Chicago: William Cullen Bryant, The World’s Famous Orations, Vol. 9 in The World’s Famous Orations, ed. William Jennings Bryan (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, December, 1906), 146–149. Original Sources, accessed November 23, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=U97DTBFUTHAL9RM.
MLA: Bryant, William Cullen. The World’s Famous Orations, Vol. 9, in The World’s Famous Orations, edited by William Jennings Bryan, Vol. 9, New York, Funk and Wagnalls, December, 1906, pp. 146–149. Original Sources. 23 Nov. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=U97DTBFUTHAL9RM.
Harvard: Bryant, WC, The World’s Famous Orations, Vol. 9. cited in December, 1906, The World’s Famous Orations, ed. , Funk and Wagnalls, New York, pp.146–149. Original Sources, retrieved 23 November 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=U97DTBFUTHAL9RM.
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