Lajos Kossuth

On the day of his release from the prison, Kossuth and Miss Meszlényi were married, and she remained a firm supporter of his politics. She was a Catholic and her Church refused to bless the marriage since Kossuth, a Protestant, would not convert. This experience influenced Kossuth's firm defense of mixed marriages. The couple had three children: Ferenc Lajos Ákos (1841–1914), Minister for Trade between 1906 and 1910; Vilma (1843–1862); and Lajos Tódor Károly (1844–1918).

Count Széchenyi judged the reform system of Kossuth in a pamphlet, Kelet Népe from 1841. According to Széchenyi, economic, political and social reforms must be instituted slowly and carefully so that Hungary would avoid the violent interference of the Habsburg dynasty. Széchenyi was listening to the spread of the expansion of Kossuth's ideas in Hungarian society, which did not consider good relations with to the Habsburg dynasty. Kossuth believed that society could not be forced into a passive role by any reason through social change. According to Kossuth, the wider social movements can not be continually excluded from political life. In 1885, Kossuth called Széchenyi a liberal elitist aristocrat while Széchenyi considered himself to be a democrat.[22] Széchenyi was an isolationist politician while, according to Kossuth, strong relations and collaboration with international liberal and progressive movements are essential for the success of liberty.[23]

Széchenyi's economic policy based on Anglo-Saxon free-market principles, while Kossuth supported the protective tariffs due to the weaker Hungarian industrial sector. Kossuth wanted to build a rapidly industrialized country in his vision while Széchenyi wanted to preserve the traditionally strong agricultural sector as the main character of the economy.[24]

The crisis came, and he used it to the full. On 3 March 1848, shortly after the news of the revolution in Paris had arrived, in a speech of surpassing power he demanded parliamentary government for Hungary and constitutional government for the rest of Austria.

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. He at once became the leader of the European revolution; his speech was read aloud in the streets of Vienna to the mob which overthrew Metternich (13 March); when a deputation from the Diet visited Vienna to receive the assent of Emperor Ferdinand to their petition, Kossuth received the chief ovation. While Viennese masses celebrated Kossuth (and from the Diet in Pressvurg a delegation went to Buda and sent the news of the Austrian Revolution) as their hero, revolution broke out in Buda on 15 March; Kossuth traveled home immediately.[25] On 17 March 1848 the Emperor assented and Lajos Batthyány created the first Hungarian government, that was not anymore responsible for the King, but for the elected members of the Diet. On 23 March 1848, Pm. Batthyány commended his government to the Diet. In the new government Kossuth was appointed as the Minister of Finance.

He began developing the internal resources of the country: re-establishing a separate Hungarian coinage, and using every means to increase national self-consciousness. Characteristically, the new Hungarian bank notes had Kossuth's name as the most prominent inscription; making reference to "Kossuth Notes" a future byword.

A new paper was started, to which was given the name of Kossuth Hirlapja, so that from the first it was Kossuth rather than the Palatine or prime minister Batthyány whose name was in the minds of the people associated with the new government. Much more was this the case when, in the summer, the dangers from the Croats, Serbs and the reaction at Vienna increased.

In a speech on 11 July he asked that the nation should arm in self-defense, and demanded 200,000 men; amid a scene of wild enthusiasm this was granted by acclamation. However the danger had been exacerbated by Kossuth himself through appealing exclusively to the Magyar notables rather than including the other subject minorities of the Habsburg empire too. The Austrians, meanwhile, successfully used the other minorities as allies against the Magyar uprising.

While Croatian ban Josip Jelačić was marching on Pest, the Hungarian government was in serious military crisis due to the lack of soldiers, Kossuth used his popularity, he went from town to town rousing the people to the defense of the country, and the popular force of the Honvéd was his creation. When Batthyány resigned he was appointed with Szemere to carry on the government provisionally, and at the end of September he was made President of the Committee of National Defense.

On 7 December 1848, the Diet of Hungary formally refused to acknowledge the title of the new king, "as without the knowledge and consent of the diet no one could sit on the Hungarian throne" and called the nation to arms.[26] From a legal point of view, according to the coronation oath, a crowned Hungarian King can not relinquish from the Hungarian throne during his life, if the king is alive and unable do his duty as ruler, a governor (or regent with proper English terminology) had to deputize the royal duties. Constitutionally, his uncle, Ferdinand remained still the legal king of Hungary. If there is no possibility to inherit the throne automatically due to the death of the predecessor king (as king Ferdinand was still alive), but the monarch wants to relinquish his throne and appoint an other king before his death, technically only one legal solution has remained: the parliament had the power to dethronize the king and elect his successor as the new king of Hungary. Due to the legal and military tensions, the Hungarian parliament did not make that favor for Franz Joseph. This event gave to the revolt an excuse of legality. Actually, from this time until the collapse of the revolution, Lajos Kossuth (as elected regent-president) became the de facto and de jure ruler of Hungary.[26]

For the first time in the revolutionary movements of 1848, for the first time since 1793, a nation surrounded by superior counterrevolutionary forces dares to counter the cowardly counterrevolutionary fury by revolutionary passion, the terreur blanche by the terreur rouge.
For the first time after a long period we meet with a truly revolutionary figure, a man who in the name of his people dares to accept the challenge of desperate struggle, who for his nation is Danton and Carnot in one person -- Lajos Kossuth

— Friedrich Engels about Kossuth (January 1849) [27]

From this time he had increased amounts of power. The direction of the whole government was in his hands. Without military experience, he had to control and direct the movements of armies; he was unable to keep control over the generals or to establish that military co-operation so essential to success. Arthur Görgey in particular, whose great abilities Kossuth was the first to recognize, refused obedience; the two men were very different personalities. Twice Kossuth removed him from command; twice he had to restore him.

The House of Lorraine-Habsburg is unexampled in the compass of its perjuries [...] Its determination to extinguish the independents of Hungary has been accompanied by a succession of criminal acts, comprising robbery, destruction of property by fire, murder, maiming [...] Humanity will shudder when reading this disgraceful page of history. [...] "The house of Habsburg has forfeited the throne".

— Kossuth, In Liszt, The Weimar Years[28]

A map of the percentage of ethnic Hungarians (Magyars) in Hungary in 1890.

Despite appealing exclusively to Hungarian nobility in his speeches, Kossuth played an important part in the shaping of the law of minority rights in 1849. It was the first law which recognized minority rights in Europe.[29] It gave minorities the freedom to use their mother tongue within the local administration and courts, in schools, in community life and even within the national guard of non-Magyar councils.[30]

However, he did not support any kind of regional administration within Hungary based on the nationality principle. Kossuth accepted some national demands of the Romanians and the Croats, but he showed no understanding for the requests of the Slovaks.[31] Despite his father's Slovak origin and the fact that his uncle György Kossuth was the main supporter of Slovak national movement, Kossuth considered himself Hungarian and went so far as to reject the very notion of a Slovak nation in the Kingdom of Hungary.[32][33][34]

According to Oszkár Jászi, a huge part of the reason as to why Kossuth opposed giving large-scale autonomy (such as a separate parliament) to various ethnic groups in Hungary (such as the Romanians, Slovaks, Ruthenians, and Germans) is because he was afraid that this would be the first step towards a fragmentation and break-up of Hungary.[35] Kossuth did not believe that a Hungary that was limited to its ethnic or linguistic borders would actually be a viable state.[35]

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.

At the end of the year, when the Austrians were approaching Pest, he asked for the mediation of Stiles, the Austrian envoy. 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. In November 1848, Emperor Ferdinand abdicated in favour of Franz Joseph. The new Emperor revoked all the concessions granted in March and outlawed Kossuth and the Hungarian government, set up lawfully on the basis of the April laws.

By April 1849, when the Hungarians had won many successes, after sounding the army, he issued the celebrated Hungarian Declaration of Independence, in which he declared that "the house of Habsburg-Lorraine, perjured in the sight of God and man, had forfeited the Hungarian throne." 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 dethronement also made any compromise with the Habsburgs practically impossible.

For the time the future form of government was left undecided, and Kossuth was appointed regent-president (to satisfy both royalists and republicans). Kossuth played a key role in tying down the Hungarian army for weeks for the siege and recapture of Buda castle, finally successful on 4 May 1849. 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. Görgey capitulated at Világos (now Şiria, Romania) to the Russians, who handed over the army to the Austrians. Görgey was spared, at the insistence of the Russians. Reprisals were taken on the rest of the Hungarian army, including the execution of the 13 Martyrs of Arad. Kossuth steadfastly maintained until his death that Görgey alone was responsible for the humiliation.

Kossuth's calls for independence and cut off ties with the Habsburgs did not become British policy. Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston told Parliament the Britain would consider it a great misfortune to Europe if Hungary became independent. He argued that a united Austrian Empire was a European necessity and a natural ally of Britain.[36]

During this period, Hungarian lawyer George Lichtenstein served as Kossuth's private secretary. After the revolution, Lichtenstein fled to Königsberg and eventually settled in Edinburgh, where he became noted as a musician and influence on musical culture of the city.[37]

Lajos Kossuth Arrives at Southampton Docks

Lajos Kossuth addresses the crowd from the balcony of Andrew's coach factory.

Lajos Kossuth's reception among businessmen industrialists and bankers in the Guildhall above the Bargate.

On 23 October, Kossuth landed at Southampton and spent three weeks in England, where he was generally feted. After his arrival, the press characterized the atmosphere of the streets of London as this: "It had seemed like a coronation day of Kings".[40][41] Contemporary reports noticed: "Trafalgar Square was 'black with people' and Nelson's Monument peopled 'up to the fluted shaft.'"[42]

Addresses were presented to him at Southampton, Birmingham and other towns; he was officially entertained by the Lord Mayor of the City of London; at each place, he spoke eloquently in English for the Hungarian cause; and he indirectly caused Queen Victoria to stretch the limits of her constitutional power over her Ministers to avoid embarrassment and eventually helped cause the fall of the government in power.

Having learned English during an earlier political imprisonment with the aid of a volume of Shakespeare, his spoken English was "wonderfully archaic" and theatrical.[43] The Times, generally cool towards the revolutionaries of 1848 in general and Kossuth in particular, nevertheless reported that his speeches were "clear" and that a three-hour talk was not unusual for him;[44] and also, that if he was occasionally overcome by emotion when describing the defeat of Hungarian aspirations, "it did not at all reduce his effectiveness."

At Southampton, he was greeted by a crowd of thousands outside the Lord Mayor's balcony, who presented him with a flag of the Hungarian Republic. The City of London Corporation accompanied him in procession through the city, and the way to the Guildhall was lined by thousands of cheering people. He went thereafter to Winchester, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham; at Birmingham the crowd that gathered to see him ride under the triumphal arches erected for his visit was described, even by his severest critics, as 75,000 individuals.

Many leading British politicians tried to suppress the so-called "Kossuth mania" in Britain without any success, the Kossuth mania proved to be unstoppable. When The Times tried to fiercely attack Kossuth, the copies of the newspaper were publicly burnt in public houses, coffee houses, and in other public spaces throughout the country.[45]

Back in London, he addressed the Trades Unions at Copenhagen Fields in Islington. Some twelve thousand "respectable artisans" formed a parade at Russell Square and marched out to meet him. At the Fields themselves, the crowd was enormous; but the hostile newspaper The Times estimated it conservatively at 25,000, while the Morning Chronicle described it as 50,000, and the demonstrators themselves 100,000.

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. The Cabinet had to vote to prevent it; Victoria reputedly was so incensed by the possibility of her Foreign Secretary supporting an outspoken republican that she asked the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell for Palmerston's resignation, but Russell claimed that such a dismissal would be drastically unpopular at that time and over that issue. When Palmerston upped the ante by receiving at his house, instead of Kossuth, a delegation of Trade Unionists from Islington and Finsbury and listened sympathetically as they read an address that praised Kossuth and declared the Emperors of Austria and Russia "despots, tyrants and odious assassins",[46] it was noted as a mark of indifference to royal displeasure. That, together with Palmerston's support of Louis Napoleon, caused the Russell government to fall.

Austrian general Julius Jacob von Haynau was attacked by British draymen on his journey in England.[47]

In addition, the indignation that he aroused against Russian policy had much to do with the strong anti-Russian feeling, which made the Crimean War possible.

In 1856, Kossuth toured Scotland extensively, giving lectures in major cities and small towns alike.[48]

"When Kossuth Rode up Broadway" (New York on 6 December 1851)

The dress parade of US. Army in New York for Kossuth on 6 December 1851

Grand reception of Kossuth: "the champion of Hungarian Independence" at the City Hall, New York

Kossuth's admission to Freemason Grand Lodge of Cincinnati, USA, 1852 (Manuscript from University of Szeged[49])

From Britain Kossuth went to the United States of America. In early 1852, Kossuth, accompanied by his wife, Ferenc and Theresa Pulszky, toured the American Midwest, South, and New England. Kossuth was the second foreigner after the Marquis de Lafayette to address a Joint Meeting of the United States Congress.[50] He gave a speech before the Ohio State Legislature in February 1852 that probably influenced Lincoln by his Gettysburg Address: "The spirit of our age is Democracy. All for the people, and all by the people. Nothing about the people without the people - That is Democracy! […]"[51] On 6 December 1851, this revolutionary hero arrived in New York to a reception that only Washington and Lafayette had received before.

The report of The Sun about the arrival of Kossuth in New York:

Thus immediately previous to the Christmas of 1851 New York city underwent a period of Kossuth mania, and it affected the holiday presents. Every New Year's gift associated itself in some designation with Kossuth and Hungary. Restaurants abounded with Hungarian goulash, a savory dish of boiled beef and vegetables, strongly infused with red peppers; and there were Kossuth cravats (formidable bands of satin or silk wound around the neck, with ends liberally folded over the shirt front), Kossuth pipes, Kossuth umbrellas, Kossuth belts and buckles, Kossuth purses, Kossuth jackets, and Kossuth braid and tassels for wearing apparel......The American Museum on Broadway "was literally covered with paintings and flags. One, a portrait of Kossuth, in the folds of Hungarian and American flags, with the words at the bottom: 'Kossuth, the Washington of Hungary.'[52]

President Millard Fillmore entertained Kossuth at the White House on 31 December 1851 and 3 January 1852. The US Congress organized a banquet for Kossuth, which was supported by all political parties.[53]

Kossuth's cult spread far and wide across the continent. Even babies were named after him during his American tour. At the same time, dozens of books, hundreds of pamphlets and articles and essays, as well as about 250 poems were written to, for, or about him in the 1850s.[54]

Queen Victoria had a negative remark about the American version of Kossuth fever too: "...the popular Kossuth fever of the time to ignorance of the man in whom they [the Americans] see a second Washington, when the fact is that he is an ambitious and rapacious humbug."[55]

There is no evidence that Kossuth ever met Abraham Lincoln, although Lincoln did organize a celebration in Kossuth's honor in Springfield, IL.,[56][57] calling him a "most worthy and distinguished representative of the cause of civil and religious liberty on the continent of Europe".[58] Kossuth believed that by appealing directly to European immigrants in the American heartland that he could rally them behind the cause of a free and democratic Hungary. United States officials feared that Kossuth's efforts to elicit support for a failed revolution were fraught with mischief. 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 noninterference to serve as constitutional dogma, he caused further defection. Luckily for him, it was unknown then that he entertained a proposal to raise 1,500 mercenaries, who would overthrow Haiti with officers from the US Army and Navy.

However, the issue of slavery was tearing America apart. Kossuth infuriated the abolitionists by refusing to say anything offensive to the pro-slavery establishment, which, however, did not give him much support. Abolitionists said that Kossuth's "hands off" position regarding American slavery was unacceptable. Wm. Lloyd Garrison, on behalf of the American Anti-Slavery Society, published a pamphlet "exposing the Hungarian as a self-seeking toady."[59] Kossuth left the U.S. with only a fraction of the money he had hoped to earn on his tour.[60]^:198

Kossuth ruined all chances for backing when he openly recommended to German Americans they should choose Franklin Pierce for president. The gaffe brought him back to London in July 1852.

Early the next year, he sent Ferenc Pulszky to meet with Pierce to obtain support for intervention in Europe. Pulszky was to also meet in secret with Lt. William Nelson USN and make plans for an expedition against Haiti and Santo Domingo. The plot ended with the failure of Milanese revolution, and Kossuth made no further efforts to win backing from the United States.[61][62][63][64][65]

Gradually, his autocratic style and uncompromising outlook destroyed any real influence among the expatriate community. Other Hungarian exiles protested against his appearing to claim to be the only national hero of the revolution. 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.

He soon returned to England, where he lived for eight years in close connection with his friend Giuseppe Mazzini, by whom, with some misgiving, he was persuaded to join the Revolutionary Committee. Quarrels of a kind only too common among exiles followed. Hungarians were especially offended by his continuing use of the title of Regent. Kossuth used his regent title until the first democratic elections in Hungary.

He watched with anxiety every opportunity of once more freeing his country from Austria. An attempt to organize a Hungarian legion during the Crimean War was stopped; but in 1859, he entered into negotiations with Napoleon III, left England for Italy and began the organization of a Hungarian legion, which was to make a descent on the coast of Dalmatia. The Peace of Villafranca made that impossible.

The promise of the international conference never took root, and in the following years, Kossuth, living abroad in Turin, Italy, had to watch Ferenc Deák guide Hungary toward reconciliation with the Austrian monarchy. He did so with a bitter heart, and on the day before the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 (German: Ausgleich, Hungarian: Kiegyezés), he published an open letter condemning it and Deák. This so-called "Cassandra letter" rallied the opponents of the Compromise, but they could not prevent its adoption and subsequent continuation.[66] Kossuth blamed Deák for giving up the nation's right of true independence and asserted that the conditions he had accepted went against the interests of the state's very existence. In the letter, his vision predicted that Hungary, having bound its fate to that of the Austrian German nation and the Habsburgs, would go down with them. He adumbrated a subsequent devastating European-scale war on the Continent, which would be fueled and induced by extremist nationalism, with Hungary on the side of a "dying empire".

"I see in the Compromise the death of our nation," he wrote.[67]

From then on, Kossuth remained in Italy. He refused to follow the other Hungarian patriots, who, under the lead of Deák, negotiated the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and the ensuing amnesty. It is doubted whether Emperor Franz Joseph would have allowed the amnesty to extend to Kossuth.

Louis Kossuth and his sons. Lajos Tódor Károly is on the left, Ferenc on the right.

Kossuth in Turin, 1892.

Publicly, Kossuth remained unreconciled to the house of Habsburg and committed to a fully independent state. Though elected to the Diet of 1867, he never took his seat. He continued to remain a widely popular figure, but he did not allow his name to be associated with dissent or any political cause. A law of 1879, which deprived of citizenship all Hungarians, who had voluntarily been absent ten years, was a bitter blow to him. He displayed no interest in benefitting from a further amnesty in 1880. Kossuth wrote a one-volume autobiography, published in English in 1880 as Memoirs of My Exile. It mainly concerns his activities between 1859 and 1861 including his meetings with Napoleon III, his dealings with Italian statesman Count Camillo Benso di Cavour and his correspondence with the Balkan royal courts about his plans for a Danubian federation[66] or confederation[68]

In 1890, a delegation of Hungarian pilgrims in Turin recorded a short patriotic speech delivered by the elderly Lajos Kossuth. The original recording[69] on two wax cylinders for the Edison phonograph survives to this day, barely audible[70] because of excess playback and unsuccessful early restoration attempts. Recording Kossuth's voice was one of the earliest applications of phonograph,[71][72] and his few sentences are the earliest known recorded Hungarian speech.[73]

The Party of Independence and '48 was established in 1884 by a merger of the Independence Party and the Party of 1848.[74] Although Kossuth has never returned to Hungary, he was the spiritual leader of this opposition party until he died in 1894, and the party was also referred to as the "Kossuth Party" thereafter.[74] From the 1896 elections onwards, it was the main opposition to the ruling Liberal Party. The Kossuth party won the 1905, and 1906 elections, his older son Ferenc Kossuth was Minister for Trade between 1906 and 1910. However it lost the 1910 elections to the National Party of Work. Kossuth's political legacy achieved that ethnic Hungarians did not vote for the ruling pro-compromise parties in the Hungarian parliamentary elections, thus the political maintenance of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise was mostly a result of the popularity of pro-compromise parties among the ethnic minorities.[75]

As Headlam noted, Kossuth died in Turin, after which "his body was taken to Pest [Budapest], where he was buried amid the mourning of the whole nation, Maurus Jokai [Mór Jókai] delivering the funeral oration"; furthermore, a "bronze statue [was] erected by public subscription, in the Kerepes [Kerepesi] cemetery…" which commemorates Kossuth as "Hungary's purest patriot and greatest orator."[21]

An Hungarian language version of his complete works were published in Budapest between 1880 and 1895.[21]

• 
  Waiting for the arrival of the coffin of Kossuth at the Western Railway terminal of Budapest in 1894
• 
  Kossuth funeral procession in Budapest
• 
  Kossuth's funeral procession in Budapest in 1894.
• 
  Mausoleum in Kerepesi Cemetery
• 
  The coffin in the mausoleum

The main square of Budapest with the Hungarian Parliament Building is named after Kossuth, and the Kossuth Memorial is an important scene of national ceremonies. Most cities in Hungary have streets named after Kossuth, see: Public place names of Budapest. The first public statue commemorating Kossuth was erected in Miskolc in 1898. Kossuth Rádió, the main radio station of Hungary, is named after Lajos Kossuth.

Béla Bartók also wrote a symphonic poem named Kossuth, the funeral march which was transcribed for piano and published in Bartók's lifetime.

The memorials to Lajos Kossuth in the territories lost by Hungary after World War I, and again after World War II, were sooner or later demolished in neighboring countries. A few of them were re-erected following the fall of Communism by local councils or private associations. They play an important role as symbols of national identity of the Hungarian minority. Hungary Postal Department paid homage to Kossuth by bringing out eight postage stamps.[76]

The most important memorial outside the present-day borders of Hungary is a statue in Rožňava, that was knocked down two times but restored after much controversy in 2004.

The only Kossuth statue that remained on its place after 1920 in Romania stands in Salonta. The demolished Kossuth Memorial of Târgu-Mureş was re-erected in 2001 in the little Székely village of Ciumani. The Kossuth Memorial in Arad, the work of Ede Margó from 1909, was removed by the order of the Brătianu government in 1925.

There is a blue plaque on No. 39 Chepstow Villas, the house in Notting Hill in London, the capital, where Kossuth lived from 1850 to 1859. A street in Greenwich, also in London, is named Kossuth Street after him. There is a letter of support from Kossuth on display at the Wallace Monument, near Stirling. The building of the monument, dedicated to Scottish patriot William Wallace coincided with Kossuth's visit to Scotland.

In Serbia there are two statues of Kossuth in Stara Moravica and Novi Itebej. Memorials in Ukraine are situated in Berehove and Tiachiv. The house where Kossuth lived in exile in Shumen, Bulgaria, has been turned into the Lajos Kossuth Memorial House, exhibiting documents and items related to Kossuth's work and the Hungarian Revolution. A street in the centre of the Bulgarian capital Sofia also bears his name.

The house where Kossuth lived when in exile, on Macar Street (meaning Hungarian Street in Turkish) in Kütahya, Turkey, is now a museum (Kossuth Evi Müzesi). The house is on a hill, with two stories in the back and one facing Macar Street. The walled back yard has a life size statue of Kossuth. The interior is furnished with period pieces, and houses a portrait of Kossuth and a map of his travels.

In Turin, Italy, there is a plaque on the building in which Kossuth lived, as well as a street bearing his name (Corso Luigi Kossuth).

Kossuth County, Iowa, is named in Kossuth's honor. A statue of the freedom fighter stands in front of the county Court House in Algona, Iowa, the county seat. The small towns of Kossuth, Ohio, Kossuth, Mississippi, and Kossuth, Wisconsin, as well as a populated area within the town of Bolivar, New York [77] are named in honor of Kossuth.

A bust of Kossuth sits in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., which also boasts a Hungarian-American cultural center called Kossuth House[78] (owned and operated by the Hungarian Reformed Federation of America). A statue of Kossuth stands in New York City on Riverside Drive near the Columbia University campus. Other statues of Kossuth are sprinkled throughout the US, including in University Circle in Cleveland, Ohio. There is a Kossuth Park at the intersection of East 121st Street and East Shaker Boulevard, just west of Shaker Square, in Cleveland. In the Bronx, New York, Brooklyn, New York, Utica, New York, Ronkonkoma, New York, Bohemia, New York, Newark, New Jersey, Bridgeport, Connecticut, Haledon, New Jersey, Wharton, New Jersey, Lafayette, Indiana, and Columbus, Ohio there are streets named in honor of Kossuth. There is also a neighborhood in Dayton, Ohio known as the Kossuth Colony.

During an impassioned eulogy of Kossuth in New York, Alexander Kohut, a distinguished rabbinic scholar, took ill, and died several weeks later.[79]

The bust of Kossuth that was added to the United States Capitol in 1990 is presently displayed in that building's "Freedom Foyer" alongside busts of Václav Havel and Winston Churchill.

Kossuth Road in Cambridge, Ontario Canada was named in Kossuth's honor.

The main street in Rawanduz was renamed in Kossuth's honor in 2017.[80]