Tadeusz Kosciuszko

General Tadeusz Kosciuszko, 1797

Portrait of Kosciuszko by Benjamin West, 1797

OTHER IMAGES

Tadeusz Kosciuszko, c. 1897
Saratoga National Historical Park — Kosciuszko Monument

QUICK FACTS
BORN:
February 1746 in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
  DIED:
15 October 1817 in Solothurn, Switzerland
  • In 1798 Congress grants $18,912 in back-pay to Kosciuszko for his role in the Revolutionary War. In his will, he authorizes his friend Thomas Jefferson to employ the whole thereof in purchasing Negroes from among his own or any others— in order to free them.
  • Jefferson neglects to do so. In 1826 when he dies, the money is still in trust, and his slaves are sold at auction.
Frequently referred to as Thaddeus Kosciuszko. Portrait to come. See entry in Wikipedia.
Categories
Poland

But as an intellectual enterprise ... [Jefferson’s University of Virgina] proved less satisfactory to its creator when it opened the year before he died. The students turned out be not so much an aristocracy of virtue and talent as a gang of rowdy youths with a taste for drink, gambling, breaking windows, firing guns into the air, and thrashing professors who tried to stop them. The horrified Jefferson came down from his mountain to Charlottesville to reprimand them. Flanked by his dear friends and fellow trustees James Madison and James Monroe, the frail eighty-two-year-old patriarch drew himself up to his full six foot two, began to speak — and burst into tears.

— Myron Magnet
The Founders at Home: The Building of America, 1735 - 1817 (2014)