Conspirator, insurgent of Greater Poland in 1848, Civil War general, Princeton University professor, Polish and American patriot - the biography of Józef Kargé fully captures the essence of the motto "for our freedom and yours" and at the same time deserves to be filmed.

Józef Kargé spoke not only Polish and German freely, but also French and English. From his youth he was involved with organisations fighting for independence. During the Civil War, he was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln to the rank of general. When he returned to academia, he taught German and French at Princeton University. He enjoyed the respect of the academic community as a war hero and an excellent teacher.

He also sometimes had to fight battles over his Polishness. This was because German circles argued that, since he was born and educated in Prussia and wore a Prussian uniform, he was an example of an outstanding German. However, Jozef Kargé retorted publicly that he was and remains a Pole.

Tombstone monument to General Kargé at Princeton
General Professor Joseph Kargé died on 27 December 1892. Before his death, he revealed to a friend that he wished death to come unexpectedly. This is what happened - he died suddenly, during a ferry trip. He left behind a grateful memory as a war hero and teacher. Unfortunately, he did not write down his memoirs and his biography is known only through American biographers.

In 1938, 46 years after the general's death, a magnificent gravestone monument was erected in Princeton Cemetery, which was in a sense a triumph for his German colleagues. The inscription in English begins with the words: "Joseph Kargé, born in Posen [the German name for Poznań], Prussia, 4 July 1823...". Unfortunately, the correct name of the place of birth and any mention of the general-professor's Polish origins are missing.

Childhood and youth of Józef Kargé
Józef Kargé was born on 4 July 1823 in Olêdry Terespotockie (a distorted name Olêdry Terespolskie can be found in biographies) near Opalenica in Greater Poland. Metric records indicate his parents' Catholic faith, which in the Prussian partition was usually an indicator of Polish nationality. Józef's father worked as an administrator at the local Opalenica estate and had served in the cavalry during the Napoleonic campaign in Russia.

The family took care of their son's education. Young Joseph, in accordance with his mother's wishes, initially studied for the priesthood, but eventually gave up, his father's influence prevailing. The humanist, philosophical foundation, however, played an important role in the boy's later life. Joseph graduated from a grammar school and high school in Poznań. From childhood he had a talent for languages: he spoke not only Polish and German, but also French and English with ease. He studied literature, linguistics and history in Wrocław and Berlin. The Parisian Hotel Lambert, led by the indefatigable Duke Adam Czartoryski, was also active in these cities.

In 1845. Kargé attended the Collège de France in Paris. When he was 23, he became a participant in an underground action preparing the outbreak of a national uprising in 1846, which was to be part of the European war against Russia inspired by Czartoryski.

Joseph Kargé during the Spring of Nations
In 1845, the young Kargé was sent with his student passport to the Russian partitioned territories to question local mayors and village chiefs about Russian capabilities in mobilising people, horses and gathering supplies, under the pretext of 'ethnographic research on Slavism'. In 1846, he returned to Poznan, where arrests were under way - most of the insurgent leadership were sent to Prussian prisons. The authorities also conducted forced conscription of young Poles into the army, which was an effective method of suppressing any revolutionary movement. Kargé was under no illusions and knew that this awaited him too. Without waiting to be called up, he volunteered for cavalry officer school. By the end of 1847, he had a Prussian officer's patent in his pocket, which years later paved the way for his military career across the ocean.

He served under Prussian orders for a short time. In March 1848, he took part in the Spring revolt in Berlin. As a cavalryman, he was supposed to quell the riots, but joined the crowd raising slogans of liberation from tyranny: "Hoch lebe das Volk! Hoch lebe das Volk!" ("Long live the people!"). He miraculously escaped death during the suppression of the riots when the army opened fire on the protesters.

In April he was already in his native Greater Poland, where, without hesitation, he joined Ludwik Mieroslawski's insurgents near Września. He fought bravely at Milosław. In the bloody battle at Sokołowo, on 2 May 1848 (over 300 dead on the Polish side), he was wounded. He was taken prisoner by the Prussians. His fate seemed a foregone conclusion - he faced the death penalty for desertion and treason.

The difficult beginnings of emigration
Imprisoned and recovering from his wounds, Kargé had no intention of waiting for his sentence. Together with his colleagues, he escaped from the Prussian casemates by subterfuge. He reached Hamburg, where he managed to sneak onto a Dutch ship in the harbour. This is how he reached Amsterdam and then Paris. He planned to continue his studies and independence activities.

In 1850, Joseph Kargé, then a student of the literature of European nations at the Sorbonne, threatened with expulsion to the Prussians, left for London. The rainy English capital plunged him into discouragement and melancholy. He became poor, destitute. In 1851, he made a desperate decision: he enlisted as a sailor on an English merchant ship and sailed to New York.

His start in America was also extremely difficult: he again starved, went through a breakdown and was close to thoughts of suicide. However, an unexpected change of fortune came. At the end of 1851, Joseph Kargé met and married a young pastor's widow. He owed the improvement in his financial situation to her brother, a New York lawyer. Together with his brother-in-law, he founded a language school, which became very successful. In 1856, he was granted American citizenship. Joseph Kargé co-founded the self-help Polish Committee in New York and fed the institution with proceeds from the school.

In the uniform of the Union army
When the eleven southern states of the USA declared secession in 1861, Prussian army lieutenant Joseph Kargé (with an accent over the 'e' so that his name was not distorted with the English pronunciation of 'kargé') volunteered for the United States Army, known as the Union or North.

He was assigned to the staff of General George McClellan. Kargé's officer's commission was highly regarded in Washington, especially as the North was suffering from a shortage of qualified commanders - most of the officer cadre was in favour of the Confederacy. Joseph Kargé was quickly promoted to lieutenant colonel and assigned as deputy commander of the New Jersey State Cavalry. He became known as a great organiser and commander. The first period of the war was a demoralising string of defeats for the North. However, Lt Col Kargé maintained excellent discipline and fighting spirit in his troops. His intransigence was also revealed at this time: in the course of organising the regiment, he came into conflict with his commanding officer and temporarily landed in detention.

He fought at Fredericksburg (13 December 1862), where Confederate forces, commanded by the legendary General Robert E. Lee, were victorious. More than 17,000 soldiers from both sides were killed and wounded on the battlefield. In 1863, during the threat of an offensive by Southern forces, the commander-in-chief of Union troops, General Ulysses Simpson Grant, promoted Kargé to commander of the New Jersey State Cavalry. For several months, Kargé led uphill battles along the Mississippi River.

Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Kargé's cavalry tactics were characterised by surprise manoeuvres, active command, personal example and the inevitability of hand-to-hand combat. "The Lancer of New Jersey" is how American biographers will title him. In May 1863, at Bolivar in Tennessee, leading a force of 600 cavalrymen, after a two-hour battle, he forced the retreat of a detachment of the famous Confederate general (founder of the Ku-Klux-Klan), Nathan Bedford Forrest, hitherto regarded as invincible. This victory boosted the morale of the Union troops.

Increasingly, Pole commanded larger troops than his rank indicated. His merits were noted in Washington. President Abraham Lincoln on 13 March 1865 appointed Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Kargé to the rank of brigadier general, "for gallantry and meritorious services during the war". The Senate confirmed the appointment on 9 April 1865, the very day the bloodiest war in US history ended.

After the war, however, Joseph Kargé did not give up the uniform. In 1867, he was assigned to the Nevada Cavalry, where battles against the Indians were being fought. The Pole demonstrated his diplomatic sense. With his personal tact in dealing with the Native Americans, he won their trust and quickly eased the conflict. General Kargé recognised that an injustice had been done to the Indians and became their advocate. After all, he understood what it was to fight the oppressed against a superior opponent.

During the 1962 Civil War centennial celebration, the New Jersey State Assembly proclaimed the 4th of July as General Joseph Kargé Day. Similar celebrations were undertaken by the governors of other states and the mayors of several American cities.

Joseph Kargé's academic career at Princeton
In July 1870, while on military leave, Kargé visited the east coast, where he met James McCosh, dean of the College of New Jersey at Princeton. McCosh made him an offer to take the chair of European languages and literature. The general decided it was time to swap his general's uniform for a professorial toga and on 1 January 1871 he returned to his academic work.

At Princeton, he was respected by the academic community as a war hero, as well as an excellent teacher of German and French, and a guardian of the correctness of the English language. There is an untranslatable anecdote in which, with a truly military ferocity, Kargé scolded a student for using the wrong pronoun. He considered military language, moreover, to be shameful and filthy, although necessary under certain conditions.