When Victimization of Poland Was Never in Doubt: Fostering Knowledge of and Sympathy for Poland in the Early American Republic, as Reported in the Niles’ Register

The history of American Polonia mentions the Poles of Jamestown, pays tribute to Pulaski and Kościuszko, but tends to focus on the mass immigrations of the Industrial Revolution and post-World War II era. One of the lesser discussed periods is the early American Republic, that is, between the winning of independence and Kościuszko's departure to lead another war until the mass arrivals of immigrants, first at Panna Maria but especially in the 1870s and beyond.The absence of any throngs of Poles during those years did not mean Americans were disinterested in the fate of Poland. The early American Republic rooted for those fighting for liberty, which was one reason so many initially backed the French Revolution (at least before its Jacobin turn). Similarly, the fate of the Poles—especially after their reformist Constitution of the Third of May against three authoritarian partitioners—attracted American sympathies. Similar feelings were extended after the 1830 and 1863 uprisings.Unlike Neville Chamberlin's brush-off a century later of a Central European victim as “a quarrel in a faraway land between people of which we know nothing,” this book shows Americans indeed wanted to know more. Joseph Bajdek, senior lecturer emeritus of history at Northeastern University, has collated, transcribed, and commented on 302 articles from the Baltimore Niles’ Weekly Register (NWK) that show reading Americans had some awareness of events in the partitioned Polish lands.NWK was what today would be called a weekly newsmagazine, published in Baltimore from 1811 until 1848 with a national circulation. In an era when the written press was the sole source of news, NWK did not just report the facts of events but usually also offered background, statistical detail, and commentary. Bajdek went through the journal, extracting reporting about Poland. The texts not only report events but almost always cast the Polish independence struggle sympathetically, particularly against brutal Russian repression and barbarism. Plus ça change. . . . The year 1811, when NWK began publication, was also when the ascendancy of Bonaparte's rule over Europe was facing the beginning of the Corsican's end. One of NWK's first articles reports in detail on the opening of the Diet of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw in 1812.But while many American newspapers uncritically applauded the successes of the Concert of Europe against the Little Corporal, NWK kept readers informed about the duplicitous background of the Russian “ally.” In good moral and republican form, consider this description of Catherine the Great: “Catherine the Great” murdered her husband, assassinated prince Ivan, the “legitimate heir” of the throne, and “usurped” the government. The infamous strumpet took to her bed the villains who done the first deed of horror, and lived her reign in open whoredom; and she had, as it were, a regiment of male prostitutes [. . .] to satisfy her lusts; but to those degraded wretches the nobility of Russia, as Edmund Burke called that class of imposters, humbly paid their court” (p. 37).Eventually dousing fleeting hopes that Poland might recover independence at the Congress of Vienna, NWK opined in 1815: A spirit of independence is up in Poland. May God grant her gallant people strength to expel their Russian, Prussian, and Austrian oppressors, a trio of knaves, that have parceled them out and treated them like cattle. “Down with the tyrants”—“let the republic be restored” and the “long agony” be over [. . .] (p. 51).As time goes on, however, NWK sees through Russian duplicity in the creation of a “Kingdom of Poland” that was a Russian satellite. Even NWK could not foresee Poland's “long agony” would last another 103 years.Over the course of years, NWK would report not just news but social conditions in the Polish lands. In the “keep ‘em down and stupid” column, the journal compares U.S. versus Polish press readership in 1827. Five-six hundred local newspapers were published for twelve million Americans; twenty million people in Russian-ruled Poland had 15 (p. 111).Kościuszko's death in 1817 is reported in several articles (including whether his remains should have been removed from Switzerland to partitioned Poland). Its most extensive treatment is the multipage eulogy delivered by then-Congressman/future President William Henry Harrison in the House of Representatives.The military actions connected with the 1830 uprising receive extensive coverage, particularly detailing Russian savagery in war and the extent of ongoing repression after the uprising's suppression. A novelty to this reviewer was the effort to settle some post-uprising émigrés in Polish “colonies” in the United States. Pursuant to 1834 Congressional legislation, 235 such émigrés were awarded land for settlement in Illinois. Various factors, including squatters who would not quit the land, resulted in the project coming to naught, while the Poles themselves apparently eventually lost their revolutionary solidarity. After initial rejection of an attempt at an alternate settlement in Michigan, it appears the group fractured and assimilated individually across the United States (pp. 323–329).Examples of how early republican Americans saw their fellow aspirants to freedom in Poland could be multiplied. This work's value lies in Bajdek's compilation of these accounts—primary source material—in one place, far more accessible than the original journal.That's not to say the book doesn't have its quirks (in a positive sense). The text and its layout are dense, original material interspersed with Bajdek's explanatory comments and observations set off in boxes. Because the material runs chronologically, there is limited continuity of storylines: the next article is whatever news item about Poland that made its way to Baltimore. But whatever its limitations, the book conveniently brings together between its two covers a wealth of insight not just about what was reported about Poland in the United States, but how Americans in the young Republic identified with a people struggling for liberty against arguably greater odds than they themselves faced. Though Polish immigration to the United States might have then been negligible, it doesn't mean Poles were not on Americans’ radar. Bajdek offers us valuable documentation into a comparatively lesser documented era of the Polish story in America.