Study Report: Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial

Magaziner, Henry

American political institutions, with their built in rights for the common man, have roots which go far back into European tradition. We were the fortunate heirs to the British struggle which resulted in Magna Car·ta. Later came the 18th Century, the Century of Enlightenment. Four great Frenchmen --Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau -- helped shape that Century. They had a profound effect on many of the brilliant young men of the period, growing up on both sides of the Atlantic. Here they were read by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. In Europe they were read by thousands of young intellectuals. Finally, when it became evident to some of these men that America was to be the crucible for developing these ideas into political reality, a number of them found their way to our shores, to help us establish a new nation. Of course, it is true that the Revolution against the British Crown was fought, to a great extent, by men who derived from the British Isles. However, from the list of Liberty-loving heroes who came here to help us, men from all over Europe, one can easily see that to these people, the founding of our nation was a matter of international importance. It provided them with an opportunity to put their political philospby into practice. To mention but a few of these men, the list includes Count Casimir Pulaski, from Poland; Baron Friedrich von Steuben, from Prussia; Baron de Ottendorff, from Saxony; Charles Noel Romand Sicur de Lisle, de Kalb and. Lafayette, from Franco; and Anthony Selin, from Switzerland. This paper is a feasibility study relating to the proposed Memorial to one of t.he most brilliant of these Liberty-loving fighters, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, from Poland.