The leader of this mission was General Zewlinski, an officer of the
patriot army of Hungary, who brought with him a suite of some dozen
persons. These, late in the winter of 1850-51, arrived at
Washington and found quarters of somewhat magnificent sort in one
of the more prominent hotels of the national capital. At once
political and journalistic Washington was on the _qui vive_. The
Hungarians became the object of a solicitude, not to say a
curiosity, which must at times have tried their souls.
The first formal action of the Hungarian committee took the shape
of a return reception, to be held in the hotel parlors. The
invitations, liberal as they were, were sought for quite in excess
of the supply, and long before the doors were open, it was quite
assured that the affair would be a crush. The administration, for
which Mr. Webster, our secretary of state, had not hesitated to
write in most determined fashion to the attache Hulsemann regarding
the presumptuous Austrian demands upon our government, none the less
was much in a funk regarding "European obligations.
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