Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/225

Rh troversy with Concord, declaring that it was immaterial whether the fire of the British was first returned at Lexington or Concord; that it was immaterial whether those who fell at Lexington were “butchered martyrs, or victims of a battlefield.”

Kossuth was presented to Amariah Preston, aged ninety-four years, and to Abijah Harrington, aged ninety-one years, veterans of the Revolutionary War, and to Jonathan Harrington, then ninety-four years of age, and the only survivor in Lexington of the action of April 19, 1775.

At Concord, Emerson said to the exile: “There is nothing accidental in your attitude. We have seen that you are organically in that cause you plead. The man of freedom, you are also the man of fate. You do not elect, but you are elected by God and your genius to your task. We do not, therefore, affect to thank you.”

In his reply Kossuth appealed to Emerson to give to him and to his cause the aid of his philosophical analysis, and to impress the conviction upon the public mind that the Revolution, of which Concord was the preface, was full of a higher destiny,—of a destiny as broad as the world, as broad as humanity itself.

In that speech he anticipated Matthew Arnold in the remark, “One thing I may own, that it is, indeed, true, everything good has yet been in the minority; still mankind went on, and is going on to that destiny the Almighty designed, when all good will not be confined to the minority, but will prevail amongst all mankind.” His speech at Concord was not of his best, and there are indications that his estimate of Emerson’s supremacy as a philosopher and thinker subjected him to a degree of restraint which he could not overcome.

Only once, as far as I know, did Kossuth speak of himself, except as the chosen and legitimate representative of downtrodden Hungary, and that was in his parting speech in