Kościuszko. Monica M. Gardner
be continued at West Point."[1] Washington acceded to McDougall's request and confirmed the appointment to the Pole, not only because he was the cleverer engineer, but especially, adds Washington, because "you say Kosciuszko is better adapted to the genius and temper of the people."[2] A few months later Washington ordered Kościuszko to submit his plans to the approval of an inferior officer. Kościuszko, who never sought distinction or pushed his own claims, did not permit himself to resent what was, in fact, a slight; but quietly went forward in his own thorough and painstaking manner with the business entrusted to him.
[1] Jared Sparks, Writings of George Washington.
[2] Ibid.
Kościuszko's work at West Point was the longest and the most important of his undertakings in the United States, and is inseparably connected in the American mind with his name. Little is now left of his fortifications; but the monument raised in his honour by the American youth, with the inscription: "To the hero of two worlds" remains, a grateful tribute to his memory. That the military students of the United States can look back to West Point as their Alma Mater is in great measure Kościuszko's doing. When it was first resolved to found a training school in arms for the young men of the States, Kościuszko urged that it should be placed at West Point, and suggested the spot where it now stands.
Kościuszko was at West Point for two years. Here, if we do not accept the legends and conjectures of former meetings, he met Washington for the first time. He had two thousand five hundred workmen under him, whom he treated with the courtesy and consideration that always distinguished his dealings with his fellow-men, whether his equals or subordinates. The story goes that with his own hands, assisted by his American workmen, he built himself some sort of cottage or shanty in the hope of one day receiving his own countrymen as his guests. One of his modern Polish biographers often heard in his youth a song purporting to be Kościuszko's composition, with the tradition that he had composed it to his guitar—he played both the guitar and the violin—on the arrival of Polish visitors. [1] The doggerel, kindly little verses, express the hope that everything his compatriots see in his modest house will be as agreeable to them as their company is to their host, and inform them that he raised its walls with the purpose of welcoming them therein. It is a fact that, true to the Pole's passion for the soil, he laid out a little garden, still known as "Kościuszko's Garden," where he loved to spend his leisure hours, alone with his thoughts of Poland. Times were hard at West Point and provisions scanty. Washington himself could not sufficiently furnish his table, and Kościuszko naturally fared worse; but out of the pay that he could ill afford and from his own inadequate stores the Pole constantly sent provisions to the English prisoners, whose misery was extreme. It is said, indeed, that had it not been for Kościuszko's succour our prisoners would have died of want. Many years later a Pole, who collected the details of Kościuszko's American service, fell sick of fever in Australia. An English shopkeeper took him into his house and tended him as though he were his own—for the reason that he was a compatriot of the man who had saved the life of the Englishman's grandfather when the latter was a starving prisoner at West Point.
[1] F. Rychlicki, Tadeusz Kościuszko and the Partition of Poland. Cracow, 1875 (Polish).
The West Point episode of Kościuszko's career came to its end in the summer of 1780, when he asked Washington to transfer him to the southern army. The motive of the request was that, without having given Kościuszko notice, Washington had removed a number of his workmen. The correspondence that passed between them was courteous but dry, Kościuszko avoiding acrimonious expressions, and simply stating that under the present conditions he could no longer carry on the work at West Point. The relations between the liberator of America and the champion of Poland's freedom were, indeed, never of the nature exacted by romance. They were confined to strict necessity, and held none of the affection that marked the intercourse of Gates and Nathaniel Greene with their Polish engineer. The precise reason of this is hard to fathom. It has been ascribed to Kościuszko's intimacy with Gates, Washington's adversary, or, again, to Kościuszko's extreme reserve—which latter conjecture, in view of the warm and enduring friendships that the hero of Poland won for himself in the New World, seems untenable.
Gates, now nominated to the command of the southern army, had at once requested that Kościuszko should be sent to him. "The perfect qualities of that Pole," he wrote to Jefferson, "are now properly appreciated at headquarters, and may incline other personages to putting obstacles against his joining us; but if he has once promised we can depend upon him."
Washington gave the required permission, to which Kościuszko replied from West Point on August 4th:
"The choice your Excellency was pleased to give me in your letter of yesterday is very kind; and, as the completion of the works at this place during this campaign, as circumstances are, will be impossible in my opinion, I prefer going to the southward to continuing here. I beg you to favour me with your orders, and a letter of recommendation to the Board of War, as I shall pass through Philadelphia. I shall wait on your Excellency to pay due respects in a few days."[1]
A French engineer took Kościuszko's place, and the latter had not long left when the treachery of the new commandant of West Point, Arnold, was disclosed by the capture of André. Before Kościuszko had time to reach the southern army his old friend Gates was defeated at Camden, and in consequence disgraced. Nathaniel Greene, after Washington the greatest general of the American Revolution, was appointed his successor. While awaiting Greene's arrival to take up his command Kościuszko was for some time in Virginia among the planters. He thus saw the coloured slaves at close quarters, and was brought face to face with the horrors of the slave trade. It was probably then that, with his strong susceptibility to every form of human suffering, he learnt that profound sympathy for the American negro which, seventeen years later, dictated his parting testament to the New World.
[1] Jared Sparks, Writings of George Washington.
Through the whole campaign of the Carolinas, the most brilliant and the most hardly won of the American War, Kościuszko was present. When Greene arrived he found himself at the head of an army that was starving. His troops had literally not enough clothing required for the sake of decency. He was without money, without resources. He resolved to retire upon the unknown Pedee river. Immediately upon his arrival he sent Kościuszko up the river with one guide to explore its reaches and to select a suitable spot for a camp of rest, charging him with as great celerity as he could compass. Kościuszko rapidly acquitted himself of a task that was no easy matter in that waste of forest and marsh. In the words of an American historian: "The surveying of the famous Kościuszko on the Pedee and Catawba had a great influence on the further course of the campaign." The campaign was carried on in a wild country of deep, roaring rivers, broken by falls, and often visited by sudden floods. The frequently impassable swamps breathed out poisonous exhalations. Rattle-snakes and other deadly reptiles lurked by the wayside. Great were the hardships that Kościuszko, together with the rest of the army, endured. There were no regular supplies of food, tents and blankets ran out, the soldiers waded waist-deep through rushing waters. Often invited to Greene's table, where the general entertained his officers with a kindliness and cordiality that atoned for the poor fare which was all that he could offer them, Kościuszko was regarded with strong affection and admiration by a man who was himself worthy of the highest esteem. Kościuszko's office, after the survey of the river, was to build boats for the perilous transport of the army over the treacherous and turbulent streams of the district. Greene writes: "Kościuszko is employed in building flat-bottomed boats to be transported with the army if ever I shall be able to command the means of transporting them."[1]