A considerable time intervened before the Governor's arrival at St. Louis. He found the territory distracted by feuds and contentions among the officers of the government, and the people themselves divided by these into factions and parties. He determined at once to take no sides with either, but to use every endeavor to conciliate and harmonize them. The even-handed justice he administered to all soon established a respect for his person and authority, and perseverance and time wore down animosities, and reunited the citizens again into one family.
Governor Lewis had from early life been subject to hypochondriac affections. It was a constitutional disposition in all the nearer branches of the family of his name, and was more immediately inherited by him from his father. They had not, however, been so strong as to give uneasiness to his family. While he lived with me in Washington, I observed at times sensible depressions of mind, but knowing their constitutional source, I estimated their course by what I had seen in the family. During his western expedition, the constant exertion which that required of all the faculties of body and mind, suspended these distressing affections; but after his establishment at St. Louis in sedentary occupations, they returned upon him with redoubled vigor, and began seriously to alarm his friends. He was in a paroxysm of one of these when his affairs rendered it necessary for him to go to Washington. He proceeded to the Chickasaw bluffs, where he arrived on the 15th of September, 1809, with a view of continuing his journey thence by water. Mr. Neely, agent of the United States with the Chickasaw Indians, arriving there two days after, found him extremely indisposed, and betraying at times some symptoms of a derangement of mind. The rumors of a war with England, and apprehensions that he might lose the papers he was bringing on, among which were the vouchers of his public accounts, and the journals and papers of his western expedition, induced him here to change his mind, and to take his course by land through the Chickasaw country. Although he appeared somewhat relieved, Mr. Neely kindly determined to accompany and watch over him. Unfortunately, at their encampment, after having passed the Tennessee one day's journey, they lost two horses, which obliging Mr. Neely to halt for their recovery, the Governor proceeded under a promise to wait for him at the house of the first white inhabitant on his road. He stopped at the house of a Mr. Grinder, who, not being at home, his wife, alarmed at the symptoms of derangement she discovered, gave him up the house, and retired to rest herself in an out-house; the Governor's and Neely's servants lodging in another. About 3 o'clock in the night he did the deed which plunged his friends into affliction, and deprived his country of one of her most valued citizens, whose valor and intelligence would have been now employed in avenging the wrongs of his country, and in emulating by land the splendid deeds which have honored her arms on the ocean. It lost, too, to the nation the benefit of receiving from his own hand the narrative now offered them of his sufferings and successes in endeavoring to extend for them the boundaries of science, and to present to their knowledge that vast and fertile country which their sons are destined to fill with arts, with science, with freedom and happiness.
To this melancholy close of the life of one whom posterity will declare not to have lived in vain, I have only to add that all the facts I have stated, are either known to myself, or communicated by his family or others, for whose truth I have no hesitation to make myself responsible; and I conclude with tendering you the assurances of my respect and consideration.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF GENERAL KOSCIUSKO.
1. Circumstances relating to General Kosciusko previously to his joining the American Army. Kosciusko was born in the Grand Duchy of Silliciania in the year 1752. His family was noble, and his patrimony considerable; circumstances which he justly appreciated, for as belonging to himself they were never matters of boasting, and rarely subjects of notice, and as the property of others only regarded as advantages when accompanied by good sense and good morals. The workings of his mind on the subject of civil liberty were early and vigorous; before he was twenty the vassalage of his serfs filled him with abhorrence, and the first act of his manhood was to break their fetters.
In the domestic quarrel between the king and the dissidents in 1761, he was too young to take a part, but the partition of Poland in 1772 (of which this quarrel was one of the pretences), engaged him in the defence of his country, and soon made him sensible of the value of military education, which he afterwards sought in the schools of Paris. It was there and while prosecuting this object, that he first became acquainted with the name of America, and the nature of the war in which the British colonies were then engaged with the mother country. In the summer of 1776 he embarked for this country, and in October of that year was appointed by Congress a Colonel of Engineers.
2. Services of the General during the war. In the spring of 1777 he joined the northern army, and in July following the writer of this notice left him on Lake Champlain engaged in strengthening our works at Ticonderoga and Mount Independence. The unfortunate character of the early part of this campaign is sufficiently known. In the retreat of the American army Kosciusko was distinguished for activity and courage, and upon him devolved the choice of camps and posts and everything connected with fortifications. The last frontier taken by the army while commanded by Gen. Schuyler was on an island in the Hudson near the mouth of the Mohawk river, and within a few miles of Albany. Here Gates, who had superseded Schuyler, found the army on the —— day of August. Public feeling and opinion were strikingly affected by the arrival of this officer, who gave it a full and lasting impression by ordering the army to advance upon the enemy. The state of things at that moment are well and faithfully expressed by that distinguished officer, Col. Udney Hay, in a letter to a friend. "Fortune," says he, "as if tired of persecuting us, had began to change, and Burgoyne had suffered materially on both his flanks. But these things were not of our doing; the main army, as it was called, was hunted from post to pillar, and dared not to measure its strength with the enemy; much was wanting to reinspire it with confidence in itself, with that self-respect without which an army is but a flock of sheep, a proof of which is found in the fact, that we have thanked in general orders a detachment double the force of that of the enemy, for having dared to return their fire. From this miserable state of despondency and terror, Gates' arrival raised us, as if by magic. We began to hope and then to act. Our first step was to Stillwater, and we are now on the heights called Bhemus', looking the enemy boldly in the face. Kosciusko has selected this ground, and has covered its weak point (its right) with redoubts from the hill to the river." In front of this camp thus fortified two battles were fought, which eventuated in the retreat of the enemy and his surrender at Saratoga!
The value of Colonel Kosciusko's services during this campaign, and that of 1778, will be found in the following extract from a letter of General Gates written in the spring of 1780:
"My dear friend: After parting with you at Yorktown, I got safely to my own fireside, and without inconvenience of any kind, excepting sometimes cold toes and cold fingers. Of this sort of punishment, however, I am, it seems, to have no more, as I am destined by the Congress to command in the South. In entering on this new and (as Lee says) most difficult theatre of the war, my first thoughts have been turned to the selections of an Engineer, an Adjutant-General and a Quarter-Master-General, Kosciusko, Hay and yourself, if I can prevail upon you all, are to fill these offices, and will fill them well. The excellent qualities of the Pole, which no one knows better than yourself, are now acknowledged at head-quarters, and may induce others to prevent his joining us. But his promise once given, we are sure of him."
The —— of Gates, for which the preceding extract had prepared us, was given and accepted, and though no time was lost by Kosciusko, his arrival was not early enough to enable him to give his assistance to his old friend and General. But to Greene (his successor) he rendered the most important services to the last moment of the war, and which were such as drew from that officer the most lively, ardent, repeated acknowledgments, which induced Congress, in October, 1783, to bestow upon him the brevet of Brigadier General, and to pass a vote declaratory of their high sense of his faithful and meritorious conduct.