Another View of Pulaski and Public Art

I've blogged in the past about Casimir Pulaski and commented on the way we memorialize Revolutionary War leaders.  On a recent visit to the Philadelphia Art Museum, I explored the statues of various Revolutionary War leaders who "reside" behind the museum, overlooking the Schuylkill River. Lafayette is one, about whom I recently blogged.  Here is the Pulaski statue:

It is a remarkable pose.  

The statue, along with the others here, were the result of the will of General William M. Reilly to acquire such monuments to Revolutionary War heroes.  More information may be found here.  Pulaski was one of four "foreigners" who devoted themselves to the cause and were actually specified in Reilly's will of 1890.  It was not sculpted until 1947, by Sidney Waugh.

We often take these statues for granted.  They seem to relate to another, more militaristic age.  Maybe they have simply become part of the environment.  Whatever.  It is good to stop and pause, and consider the person so memorialized.  Such were flesh and blood, not bronze and stone.  Perhaps, when we see such an expression on this one, we can get a glimpse into the mind of the person, and consider the reality, and not the image.  

Pulaski and Kosciuszko

Casimir Pulaski and Thaddeus Kosciuszko are honored in a unique park next to the Cooper River near Camden, New Jersey in the Polish American Congress Monument.

We see Kosciuszko in the foreground and Pulaski in the background in this view.  I have posted previously about these two; both are memorialized elsewhere in New Jersey and in other states.  The two of them are also part of the 14 statues comprising the American Revolution Statuary in Washington, DC.

The day I was there was somewhat cold and the park sparsely attended.  The two generals faced the road, their backs to the Cooper River.  Pulaski died at Savannah and Kosckiuszko survived the war, although he was wounded at the Siege of Ninety-Six in South Carolina.  I simply found this one of the more interesting sites memorializing Revolutionary War generals, and in particular, uniting the two Polish generals.  Their paths crossed in South Jersey, with Kosciuuszko engineering the Delaware River defenses and Pulaski seeing action with British Major Patrick Ferguson, though I do not believe they ever fought side by side.

Savannah and the Multicultural American Revolution

The siege of Savannah lasted from September 16 to October 18, 1779, and essentially ended on October 9 when a joint French-American assault on a fortified British position ended in disaster, claiming among others, the Polish general Casimir Pulaski.  The French forces included some 500 Haitian volunteers from Saint-Domingue.  A monument in Savannah memorializes this contribution.

Though still under French authority at this time, the Les Chasseurs Volontaires de Saint Domingue were free men who fought on the American side.  It provides a contrast to the ambivalence, if not original hostility, of Washington to allowing slaves or freed slaves to fight in the Continental Army.l

Sergeant William Jasper and the Man of Action

One of the most gallant soldiers of the American Revolution was Sergeant William Jasper; remarkably, he has two memorials to him in Savannah, more than Casimir Pulaski and more than General Nathanael Greene.  One, in Madison Square, shows him holding a flag; the other, surrounded by interstate and local highways, is a more classical monument

His birthdate unconfirmed (some sources put 1750, another 1756), there is no doubt as to his death--October 9, 1779, during the failed assault by the Americans at the besieged British position at the Battle of Savannah.  At the Battle of Sullivan's Island, he retrieved a fallen flag of the 2nd South Carolina while exposed to enemy fire and restored it to its prominent position, proclaiming "God Save Liberty and my Country forever!" He successfully conducted a variety of raids that resulted in British prisoners.  Offered a lieutenant's commission, he turned it down, saying "Were I made an officer, my comrades would be constantly blushing for my ignorance, and I should be unhappy feeling my own inferiority.  I have no ambition for higher rank than that of a Sergeant."

While it is hard to admire foolhardiness with the consciousness of today, and with Wilfred Owen's poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est ringing in our ears, it is nonetheless possible to think about Jasper as a man who put his "money where his mouth was," who acted and did not just talk, and who did so with a marked humility that is completely absent from most public figures today.

Pulaski, Kosciuszko and Memorials

     Casimir Pulaski, like his Polish compatriot Tadeusz Kościuszko, not only achieved renown in fighting on the American side in the Revolutionary War, but both also have bridges named for them.  Kościuszko survived the war to carry his fight back to Europe for Poland.  Pulaski died as a result of wounds at Savannah, Georgia.  Kościuszko actually has 2 bridges named for him-a truss bridge spanning Newtown Creek between Queens and Brooklyn, and one across the Mohawk River carrying I-87 connecting Albany and Saratoga counties in New York.  But Pulaski has the pair of cantilever bridges connecting Newark to Jersey City.

     I was in DC on business and leaving the DC government building saw the statue.  I was surprised to see Egg Harbor listed in the base of the statue together with Brandywine and Valley Forge; on the other side of the base are listed Charleston, Germantown and Savannah.  Egg Harbor, which engagement is also known as Chestnut Neck, is marked by obscure memorials to both the engagement and Pulaski.  But the Pulaski Skyway-an elegant feat of engineering-is an iconic part of the New Jersey urban landscape.  Never married, dead in his early 30s, but his name persists in the Meadowlands of New Jersey.

Chestnut Neck, Privateering and Terrorism

I had a prior post on Chestnut Neck, noting the role of foreign officers in the Continental Army.  This post takes a different look at the affair, which was the result of privateering activity by the Americans.  Jack Coggins, in Ships and Seamen of the American Revolution, notes that "[i]n a sense, a privateer was little more than a licensed pirate." Authorized by the Continental Congress, during the Revolution, privateers accounted for 800 commissioned vessels, far outnumbering the 198 commissioned vessels in the United States navy.

Here we see the view from Chestnut Neck across the Mullica River at the Jersey shore.

The Battle of Chestnut Neck makes us consider the rule of law and terrorism in the context of another time.    It has been suggested that the British deemed themselves, as we might put it today, to be fighting state-sponsored terrorism.  In an article on this topic, Professor Jesse Lemisch of John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York has written that "[p]rivateers were denounced by the British in ways that resonate with the denunciation of terrorists that we hear these days." 

The Aliens Among Us--Chestnut Neck

Between October 6 and October 15, 1778, two of the more colorful military leaders of the Revolution clashed in a small town along the Mullica River, not far from contemporary Atlantic City.  Captain Patrick Ferguson (later Major, and killed at King's Mountain) led a force of 400 soldiers consisting of the 5th Regiment British Foot and the Third Battalion New Jersey Volunteers, to cut off the privateering activity in the area.  Washington sent General Casimir Pulaski and his Legion to protect the wharf at Chestnut Neck.  Ferguson found a small number of militia at Chestnut Neck, then  a 12 house town and commercial wharf, and easily defeated them with minimal casualties, on October 6.  On October 4, Pulaski left Trenton on October 8, reached Tuckerton (then called Middle of the Shore).  After a week of watching each other, Ferguson surprised one of Pulaski's outposts on October 15 with 250 men, and in essentially a bayonet attack, destroyed the outpost and left.

Pulaski was one of the various foreigners that were commissioned by Congress to serve in the Continental Army, like his Polish compatriot, Tadeusz Kościuszko.  Kosciuszko served as an engineer; Pulaski had been a cavalry officer.  He would be mortally wounded at the Battle of Savannah a year later.  This monument in the area of where he fought at this obscure battle in New Jersey serves as a reminder that the United States has always depended upon "the aliens among us."