“Why is that here?” I asked out loud as my wife and I strolled through Williams Park in St. Petersburg, Florida on our way to lunch. I had noticed an impressive statue of a military figure just off the walkway. I ventured over to check it out and, to my surprise, it was of General Thaddeus Kosciuszko, the Polish engineer who had used his genius on the American side in the Revolutionary War. However, Florida had belonged to Spain in that period and Kosciuszko had died before Florida ever became part of the United States. So why was there a monument to him here in St. Petersburg?

I learned that a group of successful, proud and civic-minded Polish Americans had raised money for the statue and had dedicated it on July 4, 2002. The pedestal on which it stands has plaques on all four sides which relate some of Kosciuszko’s accomplishments including the fortifications he built at Saratoga and West Point. However, the one that caught my attention briefly detailed the will he had written to be administered by Thomas Jefferson which was a previously unknown fact to me.

It is unlikely the two men met during the Revolution as Jefferson was not a soldier and spent most of the war in France acting as a diplomat along with Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. At the conclusion of the war, Kosciuszko, who had not been paid during the entire conflict, remained in the U.S. only until he finally received his back salary. Congress also awarded him a land grant in Ohio. Kosciuszko returned to Europe in 1784 and, over the next decade, was involved in a series of conflicts attempting to gain Poland’s independence from Russia. During a battle in 1794 he was wounded and captured. The Russian Empress, Catherine the Great, had him imprisoned and he remained locked up until her death in 1796. Her son, Czar Paul I, adopted a more lenient policy and granted Kosciuszko amnesty on the condition he not return to Poland. Reportedly, the new czar gave him his fur cloak as a gesture of good will.

Sometime in 1797, Kosciuszko arrived back in Philadelphia which was then the nation’s capital. He would have received a hero’s welcome, and this is where he surely met Jefferson who was vice-president at the time. The two men developed a lasting friendship and corresponded with each other over the next 20 years. Supposedly, Kosciuszko gave Jefferson the cloak he had received from the czar as a gift. During one talk, Kosciuszko was reported to have suggested to Jefferson that he should initiate a program to emancipate the slaves and create an account to educate them so that they could support themselves in their freedom. The legend is that Kosciuszko gave the same advice to George Washington. Whether or not that is true, Washington actually did free the slaves he owned in his final will and also created a fund to educate them. Jefferson never did so.

(It should be noted that, though Washington freed his slaves, they were but a tiny number of those at Mt. Vernon. The custom in the South was that, if slaves were part of a bride’s dowry, she maintained ultimate control of them. (See the book “They Were Her Property” by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers.) Martha Custis Washington, who controlled more than 100 slaves, never freed them and bequeathed them to her heirs.)

In one final attempt to get Jefferson to emancipate slaves, Kosciuszko wrote a will that stated the value of all his holdings in the U.S. should be used to create a fund to free slaves and to educate them for their new lives. Kosciuszko died in 1817 and his will named Jefferson as his executor with the suggestion that he begin with his own slaves at Monticello. Jefferson refused the appointment stating that, at 74, he was too old for the job. As mentioned above, he never did free all his slaves. Jefferson recommended someone else for the position who also declined.

Kosciuszko’s will became a legal quagmire and was the subject of court battles for the next 40 years. In 1856, the Supreme Court finally decided that the funds should go to Kosciuszko’s heirs. By then, the value of the estate had dwindled down to a few thousand dollars and Kosciuszko’s desire to free slaves was never accomplished. Kosciuszko, whose military fortifications were so formidable, was unable to socially engineer a change in the United States’ political structure that had grown up around slavery.

Richard Szlosek lives in Northampton.