Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 3

[357] ‘tact’ first in Kentucky at Covington. “The spirit of the South is warm,” Feb. 24; Lib. 22.45. he exclaimed; ‘and wherever warmth is, there is life! . . . It is now for the first time that I breathe the air of a Southern State.’ But even as he spoke, the Rev. Calvin Fairbank was being doomed to the¹ Kentucky penitentiary under a sentence of fifteen years² hard labor, for having assisted in the escape of slaves—³ his second expiation in the same State for the same Christian act. At Jackson, Miss., Kossuth paid his respects to ‘Hangman’ Foote, then Governor of the State,⁴ to whom, indeed, he owed the Congressional action which⁵ ended in his release from Turkey and transportation to the United States. At Montgomery, Ala., the cradle of⁶ the future Confederacy, he repeated his Covington⁷ argument in favor of national interference on behalf of Hungary because the South held to the doctrine of State rights, identically his own!

The Southern grand tour was curtailed in order to reach⁸ Massachusetts before the adjournment of the Legislature. On April 29, Kossuth made his first speech in Faneuil Hall; and here at length his tongue was free to pronounce⁹ the name of slavery, while nevertheless confirming his refusal to heed the poet Channing's exhortation:¹⁰

But, flying slave, take the slave's part!

¹¹ With incredible self-satirization he exclaimed:

“Cradle of American Liberty!” —it is a great name; but¹² 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.” God is God. He is neither America's God nor Europe's God; he is God. 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 yet were free regarded liberty as their privilege, instead of regarding it as a principle. The nature of every privilege is exclusiveness;