Kossuth replied: 

Your Excellency has been pleased to bestow a word of approbation upon the manner in which I have spoken and acted since I am here in the United States, especially as to frankness:  which frankness, on another side, has occasioned much hostility toward me.  Allow me, on the present occasion, to exercise that same frankness.  If I were less frank, I should perhaps tell you I had a fond desire to see Mississippi, and thank the citizens for sympathy to my country.  But I claim not a merit which I do not possess.  I did not come to meet the people.  My only motive was one of gratitude toward YOU, sir.

One anxiety has weighed upon my breast ever since I have been in the United States, and that is, lest I lose the opportunity to say to you, with a warm grasp of the hand, and in a few but heartfelt words, how thankful I feel for the important part you have been pleased to take in my liberation from captivity.  I hope to God, you will never have reason to regret what you have done for me.  Allow me to state that there was something Providential in the fact, and in the time of intercession in my behalf.

The Sultan is a generous man; I can bear testimony to that.  When Russia and Austria, proudly relying upon their armies and the flush of victory, arrogantly demanded that we should be surrendered to the hangman of my fatherland; and when the majority of the Divan (the great Council of Turkey) taking a shortsighted view of the case, and influenced by the impending danger, had already consented to the arrogant demand, and when, in consequence thereof, the abandonment of our religion was proposed as the only means to save our lives, then the Sultan, informed of the matter, and following the noble impulse of his generous heart, declared that he would prefer to perish rather than dishonour his name—­he would therefore accept the dangers of war rather than disregard the great duty of humanity—­thus if he be doomed to perish, he would at least perish in an honourable way.  By that noble resolution our lives were saved.  But European diplomacy stepped in, to convert the accorded hospitality into a prison;[*] the Sultan being left alone, not supported, not encouraged by any one soever, but assailed by complications, ill advised by fear, and threatened by many, yielded at last, but yielded with the intention to restore us to our natural rights, as soon as he could be sure that he stood not forsaken and alone in acknowledging the right of humanity.  For a long while, no encouragement came, and we lingered in our prison, forsaken and without hope.  You, sir, moved a resolution in the Senate of the United States.  In consequence thereof, the great Republic of the West, by its generous offer, cast a ray of consolation into my prison, and gave encouragement to the Sublime Porte.  The English and the French governments, unwilling to appear less liberal, both approved the course of the United States.  England made even a similar offer as America, and the Sultan, glad to see that he was no longer alone in asserting what is right, agreed to the offer, notwithstanding all the machinations of my enemies, and I and my countrymen became free.