as authority by many, and as binding traditions by all. Consequently, there was not, and could not have been, any time in the century when his appeal would have been answered by an aggressive step, or even by an official declaration in behalf of his cause.
Co-operating with this general tendency of public opinion, there existed a latent sentiment in the slave States and everywhere among the adherents and defenders of slavery that the mission of Kossuth was a menace to that peculiar institution. Of this fact he was convinced by his visit to Washington and his brief tour in the slave States. At Worcester a man in the crowd had shouted, “We worship not the man, but we worship the principle.” The slave-holders were interested in the man, but they feared his principles; and well they might fear his principles for he was the avowed enemy of all castes and all artificial distinctions among men. Hence it was that he was avoided by the leaders of the Democratic Party, and hence it was that his special friends and supporters were Abolitionists, Free-soilers and Anti-slavery Democrats.
This condition of public opinion and of party division was reached as early as the twenty-ninth day of April, when Kossuth said: “Many a man has told me that if I had not fallen into the hands of the Abolitionists and Free-soilers, he would have supported me; and had I landed somewhere in the South, instead of New York, I would have met quite different things from that quarter; but being supported by the Free-soilers, of course I must be opposed by the South.” All this was error. If Kossuth had been spurned by the Abolitionists and Free-soilers, he would not have been accepted by the South; for there was not a quadrennium from 1832 to 1860 when that section would have contributed to the election of Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency with the weight of the Declaration of Independence upon his shoulders, as it came from his pen, had he been in existence and eligible to the office.
