Tadeusz Kościuszko – a hero of both the American and Polish peoples

“The truest son of liberty I have ever known (…) and that of liberty for all, not just for the few and the wealthy”

– Thomas Jefferson

Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746–1817) is one of the most popular and most frequently commemorated (both at home and abroad) figures in Polish history. A more detailed account of his life is therefore unnecessary. He was a participant in the lost war to defend the Constitution of 3 May (1792) and the commander of the failed uprising (the Kościuszko Uprising, 1794), the last attempt to save the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He belonged to the first of a series of waves of Polish émigrés, whose descendants now live, it seems, in virtually every country in the world.

It is worth recalling how he came to the USA, where he played a significant role in that country’s attainment of independence (to this day, alongside the ‘Founding Fathers’, he is sometimes referred to as one of the ‘Founding Uncles’).

Kościuszko was a graduate of the Knight School in Warsaw (with the rank of captain) and the Military Academy of the Royal Guard’s light cavalry in Versailles (Paris), where the latest concepts in fortification were taught. However, he was unable to find employment either in the army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or in the army of the Elector of Saxony. He therefore returned to Paris, and from there set off for the USA, where he was accepted into the Continental Army, which was chronically short of educated officers.

He took part in the fortification of, amongst others, Philadelphia and West Point, and his fortifications during the Battle of Saratoga (1777, a turning point in the war) prevented one of the British armies from escaping the encirclement and led to its surrender. After the fighting ended, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general, received approximately 200 ha of land in Ohio and a reward of 18,912 USD (payable in annual instalments). However, he returned to his homeland.

In 1797, after being released by the Tsar, he visited the United States once more, where he was given a rapturous welcome. He became friends with Thomas Jefferson (one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence, the third President of the United States, and at that time Vice-President), and his influential supporters succeeded in securing the payment of Tadeusz Kościuszko’s outstanding salary through Congress. A few months later, Kościuszko left the young republic for good.

The Order of Cincinnatus for Tadeusz Kościuszko

Cyncynatus (5th century BC) is one of the most popular figures of Roman antiquity, a paragon of civic virtues. When the Romans were faring badly in the war against the Aequi, the Senate resorted to a tried-and-tested, yet risky, means of averting a crisis: it appointed a dictator, an official who held absolute power for six months. The risk lay in the fact that he might resolve the crisis quickly and then, for the remainder of his term, look after his own interests.

According to legend, when a delegation of senators arrived at Cincinnatus’s home to inform him of his appointment, he was ploughing a field. He returned to ploughing just fifteen days later – after defeating his enemies, holding the triumph due to him and resigning from office.

The city of Cincinnati in the USA was named in his honour. In 1783, the Society of Cyncynates was also founded – an association of veterans of the War of Independence (1775–1783), bringing together the most distinguished officers. Tadeusz Kościuszko was one of three foreigners to be a member of this society. He was awarded the Order of the Cincinnata by US President George Washington.

Tadeusz Kościuszko’s will, left in the USA

The last knight, but the first Pole with a modern understanding of brotherhood and equality. Jules Michelet

Tadeusz Kościuszko left the USA in a hurry, incognito (with a false passport arranged by Jefferson). Before he set sail (5 May 1798), he drew up – with the help of Jefferson (a lawyer by training)—a will in the form of a letter to an American friend (whom he appointed as executor of his last will), which has survived to this day:

‘I ask Mr Jefferson that, should I die without a will, he should use my money to purchase and free as many Black people as the remaining sum will suffice for their education and upkeep. That is to say, so that each of them may learn in advance the duties of a citizen in a free state and know that they must defend their homeland against enemies, both foreign and internal enemies who might seek to alter the Constitution for the worse, so as to gradually enslave them once more, and that he may have a good and humane heart, sensitive to the suffering of others.”

Tadeusz Kościuszko came from an old noble family, settled in the Brest region of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but his political and social views were most strongly influenced by his stay of several years in pre-revolutionary France. Whilst in Poland (1784–92), despite his very meagre income, he reduced the amount of corvée labour required of his serfs on his estates from 4 to 2 days a week and completely exempted women from it (a move which did not win him the favour of the local nobility). In 1792, the king wished to award him the Order of the White Eagle, but Kościuszko is said to have refused, as a staunch republican.

The will in question was drawn up shortly after Tadeusz Kościuszko received an overdue award from the Congress. Despite the financial difficulties he was facing, he did not hesitate to allocate it to a noble cause. Although Kościuszko reaffirmed his wishes in his final letter to Thomas Jefferson (written a month before his death), the American politician did not carry out the terms of the will.
In 1852, the Supreme Court of the United States of America declared the document invalid, ordering the funds to be paid to Tadeusz Kościuszko’s heirs in Europe.

Tadeusz Kościuszko’s final will

Kościuszko, by then an elderly Commander-in-Chief, drew up the last of his wills in 1817, in which he included the following provision: Feeling deeply that serfdom is contrary to the law of nature and the prosperity of nations, I hereby declare that I abolish it completely and for all time on my estate of Siechnowicze, situated in the Brest-Lithuanian Voivodeship, both in my own name and on behalf of its future owners. I therefore recognise the inhabitants of the village belonging to this estate as free citizens and owners of the land they hold, unrestricted by anything. I exempt them from all, without exception, taxes, corvée labour and personal obligations to which they have hitherto been bound towards the owners of this estate. I call upon them only, for their own good and that of the country, to endeavour to establish schools and promote education.

Unfortunately, this provision was also not implemented (due to a ban by the Tsar of Russia), just as the announcement regarding the abolition of peasant serfdom, contained in the first point of the Połaniec Universal – the programmatic declaration of the Kościuszko Uprising (1794).

With his liberal and egalitarian views, Tadeusz Kościuszko was ahead of his time.