[1] With the help of his talent in oratory in political debates and public speeches, Kossuth emerged from a poor gentry family into regent-president of the Kingdom of Hungary.

Friedrich Engels considered him to be "a truly revolutionary figure, a man who in the name of his people dares to accept the challenge of a desperate struggle, who for his nation is Danton and Carnot in one person ...".

[10] Lajos Kossuth's mother, Karolina Weber (1770–1853), was born to a Lutheran family (Kaltensteìn-Hidegkövy) of three-quarters-German and Magyarized-German (with one-quarter of their descent unknown),[11][12] living in Upper Hungary (today partially Slovakia).

de Tótpróna et Blatnica (Liszka, 1770 – Brussels, 28 December 1852) postmaster pharmacist[19] Shortly after his dismissal by Countess Szapáry, Kossuth was appointed as deputy to Count Hunyady at the Diet of Hungary.

He greatly increased his political knowledge and acquired fluency in English from study of the King James Version of the Bible and William Shakespeare which he henceforth always spoke with a certain archaic eloquence.

The government circles and the secret police believed that censorship and financial interests would curtail Kossuth's opposition, and they did not consider the small circulation of the paper to be dangerous anyway.

As Headlam noted, his political rivals, Batthyány, István Széchenyi, Szemere, and József Eötvös, believed: his intense personal ambition and egoism led him always to assume the chief place, and to use his parliamentary position to establish himself as leader of the nation; but before his eloquence and energy all apprehensions were useless.

[32] Széchenyi's economic policy based on Anglo-Saxon free-market principles, while Kossuth supported the protective tariffs due to the weaker Hungarian industrial sector.

He appealed to the hope of the Habsburgs, "our beloved Archduke Franz Joseph" (then seventeen years old), to perpetuate the ancient glory of the dynasty by meeting half-way the aspirations of a free people.

Prime minister Lajos Batthyány's desperate attempts to mediate with the Viennese royal court to achieve reconciliation and restore peace were no longer successful.

[38] Subsequent to 28 September, the National Defence Committee (Országos Honvédelmi Bizottmány, or OHB) assumed the reins of power, initially in a provisional capacity and then, upon a parliamentary decree issued on 8 October, in a permanent manner for wartime.

[40] Already on 14 September, a rapidly growing number of his supporters called in parliament for Kossuth to be given temporary dictatorial powers because of the critical and desperate war situation.

The House of Lorraine-Habsburg is unexampled in the compass of its perjuries ... Its determination to extinguish the independence of Hungary has been accompanied by a succession of criminal acts, comprising robbery, destruction of property by fire, murder, maiming ...

[51] During all the terrible winter that followed, Kossuth overcame the reluctance of the army to march to the relief of Vienna; after the defeat at the Battle of Schwechat, at which he was present, he sent Józef Bem to carry on the war in Transylvania.

Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz, however, refused all terms, and the Diet and government fled to Debrecen, Kossuth taking with him the Crown of St Stephen, the sacred emblem of the Hungarian nation.

It was a step characteristic of his love for extreme and dramatic action, but it added to the dissensions between him and those who wished only for autonomy under the old dynasty, and his enemies did not scruple to accuse him of aiming for kingship.

The hopes of ultimate success were, however, frustrated by the intervention of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, who acted as the protector of ruling legitimism and as guardian against revolution; all appeals to the western powers were vain, and on 11 August Kossuth abdicated in favor of Görgey, on the ground that in the last extremity, the general alone could save the nation.

[citation needed] The Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, who had already proved himself a friend of the losing sides in several of the failed revolutions of 1848, was determined to receive him at his country house, Broadlands.

Due to Kossuth activity, the anti-Austrian sentiment became strong in Britain, when Austrian general Julius Jacob von Haynau was recognized on the street, he was attacked by British draymen on his journey in England.

During the Crimean War, the activism of Kossuth also intensified in London, but since Austria did not side with Russia, there was no chance of Hungarian independence being achieved with Anglo-French military help.

Following Napoleon III's unexpected peace with Austria after his brilliant victory at Solferino, Kossuth sought to link the liberation of Hungary more and more clearly to the movement of the peoples fighting for their independence.

Kossuth and the émigré movement's armed preparations and negotiations with the great powers, on the other hand, were backed by the political backdrop of a silent and passively resistant country.

[68] On the posters and in the news, he appeared as an ambassador of the European nations yearning for freedom and democracy, an implacable opponent of the tyranny embodied by the Habsburgs and the Russian Romanovs.

He would not denounce slavery or stand up for the Catholic Church, and when Kossuth declared George Washington had never intended for the policy of non-interference to serve as constitutional dogma, he caused further defection.

He describes a slave auction he saw in New Orleans this way: "Here we have seen how the owners put their fellow human beings who are just as advanced and perhaps more sensitive than they are, up for sale as if they were animals, and how they are scrutinised by buyers.

He also liaised with circles of French, Italian, Russian, German, and Polish emigrants, most notably Giuseppe Mazzini and Stanisław Gabriel Worcell, who were influential in organizing unsubstantiated uprising attempts in the early 1850s.

In the following years, Kossuth expected that the conflicts between the great powers would still make it possible to liberate Hungary, and therefore he had even several personal talks with Emperor Napoleon III in Paris.

Count Kázmér Batthyány attacked him in The Times, and Bertalan Szemere, who had been prime minister under him, published a bitter criticism of his acts and character, accusing him of arrogance, cowardice and duplicity.

The original recording[97] on two wax cylinders for the Edison phonograph survives to this day, barely audible[98] because of excess playback and unsuccessful early restoration attempts.

There are streets named in his honor in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Utica, Ronkonkoma, and Bohemia in New York State; Newark, Haledon, and Wharton in New Jersey; St. Louis, Missouri; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Lafayette, Indiana; and Columbus, Ohio.