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that of a principle is communicative.
Liberty is a principle,—its community is its security, exclusiveness is its doom.
Ergo—not white liberty, but liberty for all races of men; not the white man's God, but the God of humanity; not national patriotism, but ‘My Country is the World, My Countrymen are All Mankind.’
Ergo—‘No Union with Slaveholders!’
Ergo,
Kossuth not the guest in
Boston1 of the
Webster Whigs, the apologists of the
Fugitive Slave Law, but the companion of
Garrison,
Phillips, and
Quincy.
But no, after a lament that he had come to
2 America in the midst of a Presidential campaign,
Kossuth continued:
The second difficulty I have to contend with is rather3 curious.
Many a man has told me that, if I had only 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.
On the other side, I received a letter from which I beg leave to quote a few lines:
You are silent on the subject of slavery.
Surrounded as you have been by slaveholders ever since you put your foot on English soil, if not during your whole voyage from Constantinople,—and ever since you have been in this country surrounded by them, whose threats, promises, and flattery make the stoutest hearts succumb,—your position has put me in mind of a scene described by the apostle of Jesus Christ, when the devil took him up into a high mountain, etc., etc.
Now, gentlemen, thus being charged from one side with being in the hands of abolitionists, and from the other side with being in the hands of the slaveholders, I indeed am at a loss what course to take, if these very contradictory charges were not giving me the satisfaction to feel that I stand just where it is my duty to stand, on a truly American ground.
So this is what the beautiful tirade against ‘
American liberty’ comes to. But
Kossuth has not yet done with his ‘neutrality.’
I must beg leave to say a few words in that respect; the4 more, because I could not escape vehement attacks for not committing
