1806:
Napoleon asks Kosciuszko, who is in exile in Paris, to engage the support of the Poles to aid in his conquest throughout Europe. Kosciuszko declines.
1807:
Napoleon establishes Poland as a duchy in France, not an independent republic.
The army in America is expanded as the country deals with the threat of war with England.
Congress authorizes an increase at the Military Academy from 44 to 220 cadets.
1812:
The War of 1812 commences.
1815:
Kosciuszko moves to Switzerland.
1809:
Jefferson retires to Monticello.
1817:
In June, Jefferson writes to Kosciuszko and requests that he “Think seriously of this, my dear friend, close a life of liberty in a land of liberty. Come lay your bones with mine in the Cemetery of Monticello.”
In the summer, President Monroe visits West Point and meets with cadets in Kosciuszko’s Garden. Joseph Swift recalls in his memoirs:
1828:
Cadet Henry S. Linden, Class of 1825, suggests a monument be erected at West Point to honor Kosciuszko. Up until that point, Kosciuszko’s Garden had served as the place for cadets to visit to honor him.The Corps of Cadets (160 members at the time) take on the project and pay for the monument by donating 25 cents per month from their meager pay. The cadet committee in charge includes Robert E. Lee.
The monument was designed by a former cadet, John H.B. Latrobe, who resigned from West Point after the death of his father.
Kosciuszko’s Monument is placed at the site of one of his original fortifications - Fort Clinton.
1826:
On July 4, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, former Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson die on the same day.
“Monroe said Kosciuszko had been a faithful friend of the American cause...This sojourn at West Point and the examination of Cadets, was very refreshing after city fatigues.”
In July, General Sylvanus Thayer arrives at West Point to take over command. He is ultimately known as “The Father of the Military Academy.”
On October 15, Kosciuszko dies in Switzerland at age 71. The portion of his estate made up of the salary he earned as a soldier in the American Revolution is left to Jefferson for the express purpose of freeing and educating his slaves.
From 1830 -1842, First Classmen at West Point provide a fund from their wages to maintain the garden.
1830- 1842
1848:
Agrippa Hull, Kosciuszko’s orderly, dies in Stockbridge, Massachusetts at age 89 after life as a yeoman landowner. As Nash and Hodges note in Friends of Liberty:
William Wade, master engraver, tours the Hudson and writes about his impressions:
The grandson of General John Paterson, writing half a century after Grippy’s death, wrote, “As long as he lived, the children and grandchildren of the officers he had known went frequently to Stockbridge to see him. Hull had become one of New England’s most venerable links to the revolutionary era...It was a life that the Polish officer he admired and loved would have applauded.”
In the vicinity of the monument is Kosciusko's garden, the place where the Polish chieftain was accustomed to retire for study and reflection. Marks of cultivation are perceptible in the disposition of the walks and trees, and the beautiful seclusion of the spot still invites thought and repose.
A trip up the Hudson was a popular excursion for many visitors to the United States in the 1800’s. One such visitor was James Buckingham, a former member of the House of Commons in England who eventually went on to found the literary magazine the Athenaeum. According to Roland Van Zandt in Chronicles of the Hudson (1998) this magazine became the “vehicle for some of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century.” In 1838, Buckingham, who had a letter of introduction to Sylvanus Thayer, Superintendent of the United States Military Academy, travelled to West Point but was unable to disembark from his vessel because of an injury. He wrote of his observations as he passed West Point along the river:
1838:
We admired exceedingly, however, the beautiful appearance of the place, saw with pleasure the pillared monument erected to the memory of the brave polish patriot, Kosciusko, who resided here, and tilled with his own hands a quiet little garden, which he made his favourite retreat, and which is carefully preserved...
1842:
Chronicles of The Hudson, by Roland Van Zandt, contains many entries documenting his attempt to
“ recapture the primal experience of the Hudson.” In this work he presents Harriet Martineau’s journal entries describing her wonder at seeing the Hudson River and West Point in the mid 1800’s. Martineau published many works in England about her tours of America and garnered considerable criticism for her early support of the abolition of slavery. Having just met Washington Irving on the dock at West Point as he departs for Cold Spring, Harriet Martineau describes West Point and details her visit to Kosciuszko’s Garden:
A lady in the hotel offered to meet me on the housetop at five o’clock in the morning to see the sun rise. I looked out at three; there was a solitary light twinkling in the academy, and a faint gleam out of a cloudy sky upon the river...The morning afterward cleared, and I went alone down to Kosciuszko’s Garden. I loved this retreat at an hour when I was likely to have it to myself. It is a nook scooped, as it were, out of the rocky bank of the river, and reached by descending several flights of steps from the platform behind the hotel and the academy. Besides the piled rocks and the vegetation with which they are clothed, there is nothing but a clear spring, which wells up in a stone basin inscribed with the hero’s name. This was his favourite retreat; and here he sat for many hours in a day with his book and his thoughts. After fancying for some time that I was alone, and playing with the fountain and the leaves of the red beech and the maple, now turning into its autumnal scarlet, I found, on looking up, that one of the cadets was stretched at length on a high projection of rock, and that another was coming down the steps. The latter accosted me, offering to point out to me the objects of interest about the place. We had a long conversation about his academical life.
1836: