Discover the Short Life and Long Legacy of Casimir Pulaski

Becoming the “Father of American Cavalry”

Pulaski’s legacy was built on the powerful symbolism of the cavalry charge, a rebellion against enemies and systems he thought stagnant or backward. “Pulaski was a revolutionary,” says Dominic A. Pacyga, an emeritus historian at Columbia College Chicago. “He revolts.”

The brigadier general revolted once again in early 1778, when he resigned from his post after a brutal winter in Valley Forge. He was, as Washington wrote in a letter, “led by his thirst of glory and zeal for the cause of liberty.” He wanted command, and he wanted free reign. With congressional approval, he fulfilled these ambitions, gaining his own independent cavalry corps—a blank slate for his reforms.

Pulaski’s Legion mustered in Baltimore in March 1778 with a total of 330 men, some infantry and some on horseback. Before riding off to battle, the legion received a blessing and a silk crimson banner from a group of Pennsylvania nuns. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow immortalized the moment in his fictionalized 1839 poem, “Hymn of the Moravian Nuns of Bethlehem,” which reads, “The warrior took that banner proud, / And it was his martial cloak and shroud!”

Blood-red banner in tow, Pulaski’s Legion suffered setbacks in New Jersey and New York before finally finding free rein and glory on the battlefields of the Southern front. Upon arriving in Charleston, South Carolina, in early May 1779, the legion banded with locals to resist a British incursion. Casualties, especially among the legion’s infantry, were devastating. But the prolonged defense of the city prompted American General Benjamin Lincoln to return his army to Charleston, warding off further British attacks.

After Charleston, Pulaski “became the man of the hour,” Pienkos wrote. That summer, his legion and Lincoln’s army unsteadily but successfully beat back the British Army’s territorial gains of the previous year. By the fall, they had met up with French forces under the command of nobleman Charles Hector, Count of Estaing, and made preparations to attack Britain’s regional stronghold, Savannah, Georgia.

The assault that followed was, by most accounts, a disaster. Around 1,000 soldiers were wounded, captured or killed. In a letter to Washington, Samuel Huntington, president of the Continental Congress, bluntly called the attack a “failure.” Beyond the lack of strategic gains, the Siege of Savannah was also the source of one of the war’s most tragic, heroic and mystifying moments: Pulaski’s death.