In 1817, Thomas Jefferson, the 74-year-old father of the nation, faced a storm.
He was the executor of his friend's will, but he did not execute the will.
This almost became one of the few "stains" on Jefferson's life.
The aftermath of this will storm has been even more turbulent to this day.
Jefferson was the Founding Father of the United States, the third president, the drafter of the Declaration of Independence, and together with George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, he was known as the "Founding Father of america", and was considered the wisest of the united states presidents. He is also an expert in agronomy, horticulture, mathematics, architecture, cryptography and other disciplines, and is an inventor and violinist.
Image source: Wikipedia
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<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="60" > an era of struggle</h1>
Jefferson's good friend was the famous General Tadeusz Kosciuszko (1746-1817), a great name of his time.
Kosciuszko's influence at the end of the 18th century was like that of Che Guevara in the 20th century. This is not only because of his outstanding military achievements, but also because of the ideas he upholds.
Statue of Kosciuszko in Lafayette Park, Washington, D.C., USA. Kosciuszko is a national hero of Lithuania, Poland, Belarus and the United States.
Image source: Twitter
Kosciuszko was a legendary figure whose homeland was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which included the territory of present-day Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and a small part of Russia, Ukraine, Romania, and other countries.
The Predecessors of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, whose ethnic groups were predominantly West Slavs.
In ancient Europe, the Slavs belonged to the barbarian tribe, originated in present-day Poland, and migrated outward over the course of centuries.
The Slavs are located in an awkward geographical place, at the crossroads of Europe, with Vikings, Normans and Celts to the north and west, Turks and other nomadic peoples to the east, and Latin peoples in the Mediterranean to the south.
In the course of its long history, the nomadic peoples of the northern part of Eurasia have long invaded the agrarian peoples of the south, and the nomadic peoples who invaded the heartland of Europe from the east and north of Eurasia have passed through the living areas of the Slavic peoples.
When the northern nomads were heading for southern Europe, the Carpathian Mountains in front of them made it impossible for them to choose only two routes.
The first is from the northern side of the Carpathian Mountains, into southern Europe or straight to Western Europe;
The second was along the eastern side of the Carpathian Mountains through present-day Ukraine, Romania and other places, into the Balkans or the European hinterland where Hungary is located.
But from whichever side they entered southern Europe, nomadic peoples plundered in Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Belarus for generations. Especially when the eastern nomads continue to grow, from the east to Europe, the only way to pass is the residence of the Slavs. The Mongol invasion also followed this route.
On the other hand, the invasion of the Vikings from the north (mainly the Varyags, which is the name given to one of the Viking tribes of the East Slavic tribes) also shaped the Slavs.
Around the 9th century AD, this land of Eastern Europe was filled with various tribes of the Slavs. However, although the Slavs were everywhere, the most powerful ethnic group at that time was the Vikings of the North.
The Vikings relied on trade and force to accumulate wealth everywhere.
There were two of the most important commercial and trading centers in Europe during this period: Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, and Baghdad, the capital of the Caliphate of the Arab Empire.
From the Baltic Sea, the Vikings had two trade routes:
(1) Vashi Trade Route: pass through the Dnieper River, cross the Black Sea, and reach Constantinople;
(2) Volga River: Follow the Volga River south, pass through the Caspian Sea, and reach Baghdad.
River shipping and trading posts along the route became the focus of the Vikings' plunder, snatching things and heading south to Constantinople and Baghdad, exchanging their own furs and loot for other needs.
Whether it was the Vikings or nomads, their culture and habits profoundly influenced the Slavs, and at the crossroads of Europe, the Slavic culture was constantly torn apart, eventually splitting the Slavs into three branches, namely East Slavs, West Slavs and Yugoslavia.
(1) East Slavs: Distributed west of the Ural Mountains, they are the ancestors of modern Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians.
(2) Yugoslavs: distributed in the Balkan Peninsula, they are the ancestors of the small countries of the "Powder Keg of Europe";
(3) West Slavs: Distributed on the plains of Central Europe, they are the ancestors of modern Poles, Czechs and Slovaks.
Influenced by Orthodox culture, East Slavism belongs to the Byzantine cultural circle, which constitutes today's Russia, Belarus and Ukraine;
Yugoslavia was torn apart from east to west, with the Eastern Part belonging to the Byzantine Cultural Circle, the Western Part belonging to the Latin Cultural Circle, and even some later regions influenced by the Islamic Turkish influence;
West Slavic influenced by Catholicism and belonged to the Latin cultural circle, mainly Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
With the emergence of the concept of the nation-state, the differences in beliefs, cultures and habits of the Slavs became more and more obvious, and the contradictions between the Poland-led West Slavs and the Russian-led East Slavs became acute. As the weaker side, Poland does not want to dominate the other side like Russia, and its needs lie mainly in national independence.
Kosciuszko lived in such a struggling era.
Kosciuszko's family was prominent, and his ancestors had been vassals of the Grand Duke, so he owned medium-sized land and serfs. At the State School of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, he studied military and humanities and stayed on to teach, rising from second lieutenant to captain.
However, when civil war broke out in 1768, Kosciuszko was on a scholarship to study art in France. Seeing what was happening at home, he wanted to continue his military studies, but was forbidden to study military content because he was a foreigner in France.
In 1772, Russia, Prussia and Austria divided Poland-Lithuania. For Kosciuszko, this was not only a violation of the sovereignty of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but also of the culture, beliefs and customs of the motherland, and Poland was in a precarious state.
But at that time, Koschushko had the enthusiasm to serve the country, but he could not enter the army. His family was in decline and did not have enough money to buy officer positions. At that time, he was in France again, and the whip was beyond his reach.
At this point, God gave him an unexpected opportunity.
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<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="60" > tragic hero Koschushko</h1>
In 1775, the United States broke out in the War of Independence.
Because the United States fought against Britain, and France, as Britain's nemesis, trumpeted the justice of the American Revolution, which infected Kosciuszko, who was in Paris, and he went to the United States alone.
Since then, Kosciuszko's quest for national independence has ceased to be limited to his homeland.
After coming to the United States, Kosciuszko immediately read the Declaration of Independence drafted by Jefferson and was deeply moved by it. He joined the Continental Army and met Jefferson, and the two had a good conversation, beginning a long friendship of 40 years. In the years that followed, they became each other's most loyal friends, writing thousands of letters and talking about everything.
Portrait of Jefferson by Kosciuszko.
In the New World, Koschushko's main task was the defense of Philadelphia, where he built important fortifications and military fortifications against the British.
Later, he was transferred to the north to continue the construction of fortifications and contributed greatly to the victory at the Battle of Saratoga.
Seven years of service earned him the rank of brigadier general, and as long as he stayed in the United States, he received $12,280 and 500 acres (equivalent to 2 square kilometers) of land. But he still chose to return to China, where he felt he was needed more.
In 1788, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth embarked on a series of reforms, establishing the world's second constitution after the United States Constitution———— the May 3rd Constitution.
At that time, the country needed a force of at least 100,000 soldiers to defend the country from aggression by neighboring countries. Relying on his world influence, Kosciuszko applied to join the army and earned the rank of major general, beginning to train his soldiers.
On May 3, 1959, in front of the statue of Kosciuszko in Chicago, people commemorated the adoption of the Polish Constitution in 171.
Image source: chicagotribune.com
But at the same time, conservative forces at home rejected the Constitution and asked Tsar Catherine II of Russia to intervene.
Russia intervened in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and began the Polish-Russian War. At that time, Russia's military strength was about three times that of Poland, and there was no hope, but Kosciuszko bravely responded to the enemy, constantly winning the enemy, and creating a miracle of winning more with less.
But the gap between the two sides was too big, and the king still chose to surrender. As a result, the motherland was divided for the second time and the Polish army was dismantled. Kosciuszko was promoted after the war and could remain in the Polish army, but he could not accept such an outcome and chose to go into exile.
During his years in exile, he began to organize actions against Russia.
In 1794, Kosciuszko organized a full-scale uprising, leading ten thousand rebel troops to launch an offensive like the Russian army, once again winning more with less and creating miracles.
The first major battle of the Kosciuszko Uprising was the Battle of Rasivavice (April 4, 1794), which depicts this dramatic scene.
His actions quickly drew a nationwide echo, and his Povanez Declaration emphasized the abolition of partial serfdom and the recognition of peasant civil liberties.
However, the rebel army was too small, the conservatives and Russia were too strong, and Koschushko's actions were tantamount to moths to the fire.
The following year, Poland was further divided.
After the death of Katerina II, the Russian Tsar Paul I took office, and he pardoned Kosciuszko and released some political prisoners. Still unwilling, Kosciuszko did not want his homeland to be reduced to the humiliation of puppet regime control, he joined Napoleon's Polish army, and with the collapse of Napoleon's Empire, his ideals were once again shattered.
In his later years, he bargained with Tsar Alexander I of Russia for social reforms and the expansion of Polish territory, all of which failed until the end of depression, and his ideals were never realized.
At the beginning of the 19th century, when Romantic thought was in full swing, Kosciuszko was a tragic hero in the minds of Europeans, and his outstanding military talents seemed superfluous and powerless in that era.
In addition to his dramatic life, people admire his character even more. On the one hand, his will explained the value of his life's pursuit, but on the other hand, Jefferson fell into endless turmoil.
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<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="60" > will storm</h1>
On 2 March 2018, the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) hosted a public seminar on Kosciuszko's extraordinary life as part of the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In its coverage of the event, New Eastern Europe pointed out the link between Kosciuszko and human rights as follows:
"General Kosciuszko fought for human rights and defended the ideals of freedom, justice and equality for all."
In his lifetime, Kosciuszko had two battlefields, one for the fatherland and the nation, and the other for human rights.
When he first came to the United States, the army equipped him with a black slave, and he gave the black slave freedom. When he returned to Poland after the War of Independence, he immediately reduced the compulsory length of service of male serfs and exempted female serfs from slavery. And in the last moments of his frailty, he freed all his slaves.
The American writer Albert Cizauskas noted in a biographical article commemorating Koschushko:
"Kosciuszko's deep concern for political freedom extends far beyond the horizons of the battlefield ... Throughout his career, Kosciuszko was imbued with a "humanistic idealism" that made him a pioneer of the times, leading an era in which "revolutionary nationalism" and "liberal optimism" were transforming the political and social life of the West."
In a way, Kosciuszko has no enemies, his enemies are never people, but ideas. He fought for justice, which made his battlefield never confined to one place, but everywhere.
Similarly, his war was not limited to a certain time, even after his death, he wanted to continue to fight against an unequal and unjust system.
So, in 1798, he wrote a will, hoping that after his death, his friend Jefferson would continue his mission.
Arthur Szyk's 1938 painting depicting Kosciuszko, holding his own will in 1798.
Image source: culture.pl
At that time, he was preparing to secretly return to Europe from the United States, and Jefferson issued him a passport under a false name. Before returning home, he felt that the future was uncertain and dangerous, so he decided to draft a will. The content is to use one's own property in the United States to free slaves and to fund their education. He wrote:
"I beg Mr. Jefferson that if I die and leave no will, he should take so much out of my money to buy negroes, release them, and give them (the rest) enough money to provide them with living expenses..."
At the time, Jefferson agreed to be the executor of the will.
However, upon his return to Europe, Kosciuszko wrote three more wills in 1806, 1816, and 1817. As a result, when Kosciuszko died of illness in October 1817, Jefferson was faced with the question of whether to execute his will.
Since Kosciuszko had four wills, and his will in 1798 was the earliest, the legal validity of this will became a question.
These wills affected the legal validity of Kosciuszko's 1798 will.
In fact, Kosciuszko's handwritten will in 1816 already included a clause explicitly revoking all previous wills, which became a basis for the U.S. Supreme Court's 1852 decision to end the 1798 testament.
But the problem is that in Kosciuszko's 1817 letter to Jefferson, he mentions the 1798 testament as if it were still functioning. Moreover, his will of 1817 referred not only to the disposition of European property, but also to past possessions: this also included his property in the United States.
The will contradicted itself, leaving Jefferson undecided.
Jefferson ultimately chose not to execute. His reasons were:
"I'm almost 75 years old, and it will take longer than the rest of my life to comply with the rules of my will."
Then, when the beneficiaries and agents of Koschushko's later wills wrote to Jefferson, Jefferson learned that Koschushko's 1806 and 1817 wills "applied for all or part of the funds covered by the 1798 will."
By this time, Jefferson had become more explicit that he did not want to be the executor of his will, and added a reason to his list of reasons for withdrawal: the possibility of litigation.
Although Jefferson was no longer the executor of the will, he then took steps to ensure that Kosciuszko's wishes were respected during his lifetime, as Jefferson repeatedly expressed to Koschushko in his letters.
Jefferson hired John Hartwell Cocke, then 39, to succeed him as executor.
Cork was a respected Virginian who helped Jefferson establish the University of Virginia and had anti-slavery tendencies.
Cork was very cooperative at first, but later realized that the educational requirements of the will were difficult to implement, and even at the time it was almost impossible to implement. No white school was willing to admit blacks, and the white community opposed the idea of setting up schools for blacks.
As a result, Cork rejected the formal appointment of the executor. Kosciuszko's human rights ideals continued to be frustrated after his death.
Finally, on the advice of then U.S. Attorney General William Wirt, Jefferson formally handed the will to the Orphan's Court, which eventually appointed Benjamin Lear as Kosciuszko's administrator.
At this point, Jefferson finally "got rid of" Kosciuszko's 1789 will.
However, Kosciuszko's last ideal was not realized.
God is fair, and he is forever praised for his tragedy in Kosciuszko, while Jefferson is constantly criticized by future generations for refusing to carry out his will.
The storm over Kosciuszko's will is not over.
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<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="60" > "Jefferson was a slave owner"? </h1>
In the biography of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, Koschushko is hailed as one of the two most prominent foreigners fighting for American independence, the other being Marquis de Lafayette, a French military hero in the American Revolutionary War.
In Lafayette Park, opposite the White House, there is a statue commemorating Kosciuszko, on which is inscribed this sentence:
"When Kosciuszko fell, Freedom screamed."
Kosciuszko's ideas have inspired people for the next 200 years. People saw in him the eternal pursuit of freedom, independence, and equality.
Although Jefferson, as the founding father of the United States, although he has always been praised and respected, he has been constantly criticized for his will.
The abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison criticized Jefferson's inaction in executing his will; some historians commented that Jefferson would not have found so many reasons if he really cared about Kosciuszko and was really moralistic; and even the authors of Jefferson's biography thought jefferson was indifferent on the matter.
These criticisms of Jefferson are often elevated to accusations of racism.
Jefferson, who had 650 slaves in his lifetime, was accused of "riding on the back of a slave into the temple of freedom." To this day, this is still taken out as a "stain" on Jefferson's life.
In 1795, Jefferson listed the names of the 163 slaves he owned at the time in his Farm Manual. Image source: Wikipedia
In 2020, when George Floyd died as a result of police violence, Americans took to the streets to renew their call for the rights of African-Americans.
Some extreme protesters even vented their anger on Jefferson, knocking down his statue and writing "George Freud" and "Jefferson is a slave owner."
The toppled statue of Jefferson with the words graffiti on the base. Image source: dailyhive.com
Of course, if one goes back to the history of the time, it is not difficult to find that whether it is the execution of Jefferson's will or the fact that he was enslaved, people have been too harsh on him.
This is not only a misreading of Jefferson, but also a misreading of Kosciuszko.
The riots sparked by the George Floyd incident also spread to the Kosciuszko statue in Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., where the hero who fought for human rights all his life was so grossly misinterpreted.
Image source: www.reddit.com
Moreover, it was also the 19th century that humanity really began to abolish slavery on a large scale. It was not until 1807 that the British Parliament passed a bill declaring a ban on the slave trade.
In 1833, the United Kingdom officially abolished slavery, becoming the first country in history to abolish slavery. Today, however, 40 million people around the world are enslaved.
From this point of view, whether it was Kosciuszko or Jefferson, it was quite ahead of its time.
It is worth noting that Kosciuszko did do a lot of great things, and Jefferson did the same.
Although Jefferson had 650 slaves and inherited the property of 175 of them, these slaves were all born on his estate. He later purchased a large number of slaves, mostly to reunite them with their families. For economic reasons, he later sold 110 slaves, and later he voluntarily released 161 slaves.
Jefferson's opposition to slavery was a courageous and radical act in the United States at the time. He had denounced britain's importation of slaves into the United States and proposed abolishing slavery in all territories of the western United States, limiting slave imports to 15 years. After Jefferson's death, his will also called for the release of his own slaves.
Jefferson denounced slavery, but he opposed being too radical in it, which would only cause greater trauma to society.
In the matter of executing the will, his choice is also a common human feeling. After all, Jefferson was 3 years older than Koschushko, and he was already 74 years old when he was needed to execute his will, not to mention that there was a huge contradiction in the will itself.
Jefferson and Kosciuszko are two sides of the same coin, both yearning for social progress, but in different ways.
Kosciuszko's spirit of struggle is eternal, and Jefferson's reality and prudence are equally eternal, and a society needs Kosciuszko's courage and ideals, as well as Jefferson's wisdom.
Societies that produce both are worthy of reverence, and even more so in societies that embrace both.
After all, more than 200 years ago, they were able to tolerate and appreciate each other.