Louis Kossuth
February, 1852
Kossuth, leader of a Hungarian revolution, has been in the United States, invited by the Congress. He has spoken in many places, but never mentioned slavery. Garrison writes extensively of his disappointment. Here is an excerpt from a letter to Kossuth: “Less than a month has elapsed since your arrival; but, during that brief period, you have made more addresses, and received more delegations, — representing various professions, societies, and corporations, — than any other man living. Your addresses have been characterized by astonishing versatility and copiousness, as well as charged with the electric flame of an oriental eloquence; you have discussed a wide range of topics; you have marked out your own course, and been left unembarrassed by any distinct presentations of a mooted question; you have shown yourself no stranger to the history, growth and power of this nation; and you seem to have found among us, as a people, every thing to admire and extol, in strains of loftiest panegyric. But there is one topic that you have shunned, as though to name it would be a crime, — and that is, SLAVERY! There is one stain on our national escutcheon that your vision has failed to detect, — and that is, the blood of the almost exterminated Indian tribes, and of millions of the descendants of Africa! ..” 1