| As approval ratings for America's first Black President continue to soar, I'd like to point out that two of our early Presidents, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, owned Black slaves, and Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a Polish general, tried to buy those slaves -- and free them.
Kosciuszko arrived in Philadelphia in August of 1776, where Benjamin Franklin put him in charge of building forts. George Washington ordered Kosciuszko to draft the blueprints for West Point, the same plans that Benedict Arnold tried to sell to the British, and Thomas Jefferson sent the Pole to Paris to negotiate the freedom of American seamen after the XYZ affair. Jefferson said of Kosciuszko: He is as pure a son of liberty, as I have ever known, and of that liberty which is to go to all, and not to the few or rich alone.
Alex Storozynski, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is the author of newly published book "The Peasant Prince. Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution".
After the revolution, Kosciuszko made Jefferson the administrator of his last will and testament, in which he instructed the founding father to use his money to buy slaves and free them, and to give them each 100 acres of land, farming tools and cattle, so that they could earn a living as free citizens of the United States. But Jefferson never carried out that will, and a lawsuit wound its way through the courts for decades, until the will was thrown out by the United States Supreme Court in 1852.
A Prince of Tolerance Offers Lessons for the Future of Race Relations
In 1908, Israel Losey White, literary editor of the Newark Evening News, wrote, "This will is an unwritten chapter in American History. It is possible that if its suggestions had been followed, there might have been no Civil War in the United States, and the race problem of today would not be so perplexing to economists."
African Americans are not the only people that suffered from discrimination in this country. In fact, the United States has always had a totem pole of bigotry, where the latest arrivals were notched in at the bottom of the shame pole.
The exception to this rule was the treatment of Native Americans, who were here first. Yet they were abused and killed by white Europeans. Already in the 1790s, Kosciuszko stood up for these tribes, and chief Little Turtle of the Miami tribe visited him in Philadelphia to give him a combination tomahawk-peace pipe as a sign of appreciation.
Kosciuszko took what he had learned during the American Revolution to Europe, where he started a revolution to try to end another form of slavery, feudalism, in which feudal lords enslaved white serfs. And because Jews were taxed unfairly, Kosciuszko took on their cause as well. His friend Berek Joselewicz started a Jewish cavalry to fight alongside Kosciuszko. It was the first wholly Jewish military unit since biblical times. Even a black man named Jean Lapierre traveled to Poland to fight for white serfs, and Kosciuszko also welcomed Sunni Muslims into his army.
The fact that American historians have ignored Kosciuszko is also due to bigotry. His story does not fit into the cookie-cutter framework that the United States was simply founded by WASPs. That's why the stories of people like Kosciuszko, and his friend Haym Solomon, are also ignored. Solomon was a Polish Jew who immigrated to New York and financed much of the American Revolution.
Every ethnic group in this country can tell you how they suffered indignities when they first arrived. Irish-Americans remember the "Help Wanted -- Irish need not apply" signs. Chinese Americans know that the phrase "Chinaman's Chance in Hell" refers to the dangerous jobs they were forced to take placing explosives on mountainsides to clear the way for the transcontinental railroad. Japanese-Americans are still pained by the concentration camps that their families were held in during World War II. And the Pollack jokes that my parents had to face when they arrived were simply dreadful.
It is not until new ethnic groups learn to speak English and reach a modicum of success before they are tolerated in the United States. These days, many look with a suspicious eye at new arrivals from Mexico, Muslim countries, and elsewhere. We must get over our fear of newcomers. They come here for a better life, and they are eager to work hard.
Kosciuszko's motto was that he fought "for your freedom and ours." He understood that all people yearned to be free. Without question, America is the greatest country in the world, but we must remember that this is because we are the melting pot. Other nations look to us for inspiration, and the new immigrants that arrive on our shores send back lessons about American freedoms to their own countries. The United States has an incredible opportunity to encourage other nations to achieve freedom on their own terms. That is why we should learn about the histories of other lands, and even that of our own country, as it really was, and not just some feel-good formula.
Source: Kosciuszko - The Prince of Tolerance, May 18th 2009
More about Storozynski & some reviews of his book
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