At Saratoga, Israel Ashley tried to reclaim his slave, Gilliam, who enlisted without his master’s approval. Kosciuszko’s mentor, General Gates, thwarted Ashley’s attempt to repossess Gilliam, and allowed him and other slaves to remain in the army. With Polish noblemen complaining that their serfs had joined the army without permission, it was Kosciuszko’s turn to take a stand. Together with his advisers Kollontay and Ignacy Potocki, the commander drafted the most radical proclamation of the war. On May 7, 1794, in a field outside the village of Polaniec, Kosciuszko issued the Proclamation of
At Saratoga, Israel Ashley tried to reclaim his slave, Gilliam, who enlisted without his master’s approval. Kosciuszko’s mentor, General Gates, thwarted Ashley’s attempt to repossess Gilliam, and allowed him and other slaves to remain in the army. With Polish noblemen complaining that their serfs had joined the army without permission, it was Kosciuszko’s turn to take a stand. Together with his advisers Kollontay and Ignacy Potocki, the commander drafted the most radical proclamation of the war. On May 7, 1794, in a field outside the village of Polaniec, Kosciuszko issued the Proclamation of Polaniec, granting civil rights to Poland’s peasants and cutting their corvée. Kosciuszko’s preamble criticized those noblemen who had a “criminal spirit of self love and selfish prospects, added with mixed up stubbornness, delay and the tendency to unite with outsiders, ending in ignoble submission to them.” The commander issued fourteen points, the first of which gave serfs the same rights as everyone else “under the laws and protection of the national government.” The second declared that “every peasant is personally free, and free to move where he wishes, provided he notifies the Commission for Order of his County as to his whereabouts, and provided he has paid his debts and national taxes.”45 As he had done with his own serfs, Kosciuszko cut the work requirement of the corvée in half, and by two-thirds for some. The remaining points reduced the bureaucratic restrictions that made ...
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Proclamation of Polaniec, May 7, 1794, freeing serfs and ending feudalism, enabling them to own and build wealth
