Hull and Kosciuszko: For the freedom of America, Poland and the world

Agrippa Hull enlisted at age 18 in Colonel Ebenezer Sprout's Massachusetts regiment to fight the British Empire in the war for independence.

He would spend the majority of nearly seven years service assigned as an aide to Colonel Tadeusz Kosciuszko.

Kosciuszko told General Washington that Hull was the only available orderly willing "to go with me so far off" as he set out for the southern theater of the Revolutionary War. Together they experienced some of the most, bloody, bitter, difficult, and often demoralizing fighting of the entire conflict.

Sculpture of Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Aggrippa Hull by Tracy H. Sugg.

Sculpture that reflects a Touch of the Infinite

The lifelong bond between the Polish aristocrat turned freedom fighter, and the free man of African descent from Massachusetts, began at West Point, where Kosciuszko had overseen fortifications that closed the last British hope to take control of the Hudson Valley and split the revolting colonies. Hull had been serving for two years as orderly to Colonel John Patterson, commanding several Berkshire area companies. Accompanying Patterson, Hull experienced the loss of Fort Ticonderoga to the invading army of British General Burgoyne, the American victory over Burgoyne at Saratoga, the winter at Valley Forge, and the Battle of Monmouth, before redeploying to West Point.

Hull may have at least briefly met Kosciuszko during the fighting around Ticonderoga in 1777. Among his many stories told to future generations, as an aging revolutionary veteran, Hull recalled being present at Burgoyne's surrender. At Valley Forge, he met the Marquis de Lafayette, and the anti-slavery South Carolinian, Colonel John Laurens.

Kosciuszko, was determined to go to the most intense fighting, so moving south he served as military engineer to General Nathanael Greene's forces resisting the British invasion of Georgia and South Carolina. He and Hull forged a life-long friendship, although sometimes separated by thousands of miles, arriving shortly after the American defeat at Camden in August 1780. Over the next year, they endured the hardships of an army denied supplies, playing fox and hounds with superior British forces.

Hull served with Kosciuszko through the American victory at Cowpens on the Pee Dee River, and the bloody fight at Eutaw Springs -- a draw, but the British withdrew with heavier losses.

Hull forever remembered his work assisting army doctors treating 375 badly wounded Continental troops. After news arrived of General Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown in 1781, Greene cleared the interior of British units and closed in on Charleston.

Georgia and the Carolinas had more Loyalists than any other colony except New York. Unfortunately, both Loyalists and Patriots in those states predominantly owned large numbers of slaves. More than any other states, in this region the Revolution was a genuine civil war, with half the population actively aiding the British, and Loyal militias ambushing ragged, starving, Continental soldiers. Slave owners had incentive to remain loyal, since British troops offered freedom only to the slaves of those fighting against British rule.

On James Island, where the 54th and 55th Massachusetts would distinguish themselves against confederate forces in 1863, Kosciuszko led an attack on the British in Fort Johnson -- which was the last American defeat before the British evacuated Charleston in December 1782.

In June 1783, the two veterans boarded a ship to take them from Charleston to Philadelphia. Hull declined Kosciuszko's invitation to accompany him back to Poland. Hull likely walked home to Massachusetts. From 1791 to 1795 Kosciuszko led revolutionary attempts to free Poland from foreign domination, and extend liberty to the nation's serfs -- a nearly enslaved majority.

After years in Russian prisons after the defeat of his armies, he returned to the United States for a few years.

He had a reunion with Hull who traveled from Stockbridge to New York to see him in 1797.

Of course there is a lot more to this store. Please read the book -- which might informally be called "A Pole, and African American and a Virginia plantation owner walk into a revolution..." (Oh, yes, they crossed paths with Thomas Jefferson too.)