,
armed with muskets and bayonets, while his anteroom was crowded
with the members of his staff. They had evidently been reared in
camps, as they caroused all day and then tumbled into their beds
booted and spurred, furnishing items of liquors, wines, cigars,
and damaged furniture for the long and large hotel bill which
Congress had to pay. Mr. Seward entertained the Hungarian party
at an evening reception, and a number of Congressmen gave Kossuth
a subscription dinner at the National Hotel, at which several of
the known aspirants for the Presidency spoke. Mr. Webster was, as
became the Secretary of State, carefully guarded in his remarks,
and later in the evening, when the champagne had flowed freely, he
indulged in what appeared to be his impromptu individual opinions,
but he unluckily dropped at his seat a slip of paper on which his
gushing sentences had been carefully written out. General Houston
managed to leave the table in time to avoid being called upon to
speak, and General Scott, who regarded Kossuth as a gigantic humbug,
had escaped to Richmond. Kossuth was invited to dine at the White
House, and on New Year's day he held a reception, but he failed in
his attempt to secure Congressional recognition or material aid.

A number of the leading public men at Washington were so disgusted
by the assumption and arrogance displayed by Kossuth, and by the
toadyism manifested by many of those who humbled themselves before
him, that they organized a banquet, at which Senator Crittenden
was the principal speaker. "Beware," said the eloquent Kentuckian,
in the words of Washington, "of the introduction or exercise of a
foreign influence among you! We are Americans! The Father of our
Country has taught us, and we have learned, to govern ourselves.
If the rest of the world have not learned that lesson, how shall
they teach us? We are the teachers, and yet they appear here with
a new exposition of Washington's Farewell Address. For one, I do
not want this new doctrine. I want to stand _super antiquas vias_
--upon the old road that Washington traveled, and that every
President from Washington to Fillmore has traveled."

The main effect of Kossuth's visit to the United States was an
extraordinary impetus given to "The Order of United Americans,"
from which was evolved that political phenomenon, the American, or
Know-Nothing, party. The mysterious movements of this organization
attracted the curiosity of the people