All evidence to the contrary, Thomas Jefferson never served time in a Russian prison.<\/p>\n
But we’re jumping ahead.\u00a0 This story begins in 1776 in Philadelphia, when a Polish prince named Andrei arrives to join the American Revolution.\u00a0 He asks Ben Franklin where he can take the army’s engineering admissions test, but no such test exists.\u00a0 So Andrei urges Congress to create one, and they appoint him head engineer of the Continental Army.\u00a0 He is sent north, and performs brilliantly in the great American victory at Saratoga.\u00a0 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.)\u00a0 Andrei’s engineering genius proves key to America winning independence in 1781.<\/p>\n
But Andrei’s fight for freedom continues.\u00a0 He befriends Thomas Jefferson and urges him to free his slaves.\u00a0 Jefferson refuses.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In response, Russia invades Poland.\u00a0 Andrei leads his country’s defenses but he’s betrayed by his Prussian and Lithuanian allies, and Poland surrenders.\u00a0 Andrei leads a Polish uprising, which fails, and he’s thrown into prison in St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n
Two years later, Czar Paul I gives him a fur coat and releases him, on the promise he’ll leave Europe.\u00a0 Andrei returns to America and again asks Jefferson to free his slaves.\u00a0 Again Jefferson refuses.\u00a0 He travels to Paris and urges Napoleon to support an independent Poland.\u00a0 Napoleon refuses.\u00a0 In 1815, when Napoleon’s government collapses, Andrei returns to Russia, meets with Czar Alexander I, who promises to create a new democratic Poland.\u00a0 But the Czar reneges on his promise.\u00a0 Andrei writes numerous letters of appeal, but finally he dies, exhausted, in 1817.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Jefferson declines to execute the will, on the grounds that he is too old.<\/p>\n
Andrei is a national hero in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus.\u00a0 He is also an American citizen, a brigadier general, and a member of the Order of the Cincinnati.\u00a0 Countless bridges, parks and memorials bear his name.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
But even in death, he continues to hover over his old friend.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Yesterday was Andrei’s birthday.\u00a0 His full name is Andrei Thaddeus Bonaventure Kosciusko.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All evidence to the contrary, Thomas Jefferson never served time in a Russian prison. But we’re jumping ahead.\u00a0 This story begins in 1776 in Philadelphia, when a Polish prince named Andrei arrives to join the American Revolution.\u00a0 He asks Ben Franklin where he can take the army’s engineering admissions test,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[47,960,1063,1084,1223,1240,1316],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","tag-american-revolution","tag-poland","tag-russia","tag-saratoga","tag-thaddeus-kosciusko","tag-thomas-jefferson","tag-warsaw"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}