All evidence to the contrary, Thomas Jefferson never served time in a Russian prison.

But we’re jumping ahead.  This story begins in 1776 in Philadelphia, when a Polish prince named Andrei arrives to join the American Revolution.  He asks Ben Franklin where he can take the army’s engineering admissions test, but no such test exists.  So Andrei urges Congress to create one, and they appoint him head engineer of the Continental Army.  He is sent north, and performs brilliantly in the great American victory at Saratoga.  George Washington then orders him to fortify the Hudson River, so Andrei builds an impregnable fortress that we now know as West Point. ( It’s so effective that when Benedict Arnold turns traitor, he offers to sell the plans of West Point to the British for 20,000 pounds.)  Andrei’s engineering genius proves key to America winning independence in 1781.

But Andrei’s fight for freedom continues.  He befriends Thomas Jefferson and urges him to free his slaves.  Jefferson refuses.  Andrei returns to Poland, frees his OWN serfs, and helps Poland create a new democratic Constitution, the first in Europe and the second in the world after the United States.  In response, Russia invades Poland.  Andrei leads his country’s defenses but he’s betrayed by his Prussian and Lithuanian allies, and Poland surrenders.  Andrei leads a Polish uprising, which fails, and he’s thrown into prison in St. Petersburg.

Two years later, Czar Paul I gives him a fur coat and releases him, on the promise he’ll leave Europe.  Andrei returns to America and again asks Jefferson to free his slaves.  Again Jefferson refuses.  He travels to Paris and urges Napoleon to support an independent Poland.  Napoleon refuses.  In 1815, when Napoleon’s government collapses, Andrei returns to Russia, meets with Czar Alexander I, who promises to create a new democratic Poland.  But the Czar reneges on his promise.  Andrei writes numerous letters of appeal, but finally he dies, exhausted, in 1817.  In his will, he names Thomas Jefferson his executor, and requests that the lands that he was gifted by Congress be sold and used to purchase freedom for Jefferson’s slaves.  Jefferson declines to execute the will, on the grounds that he is too old.

Andrei is a national hero in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus.  He is also an American citizen, a brigadier general, and a member of the Order of the Cincinnati.  Countless bridges, parks and memorials bear his name.  His body now lies in Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, his heart is in the Royal Castle in Warsaw, and his viscera are in a Polish chapel in Zuchwil, Switzerland.

But even in death, he continues to hover over his old friend.  Just go to the Jefferson Memorial and look up at the statue. You’ll see, draped across the President’s shoulders, the Russian fur prison coat which Andrei gave him at their final meeting.

Yesterday was Andrei’s birthday.  His full name is Andrei Thaddeus Bonaventure Kosciusko.