Friends of Liberty: A Tale of Three Patriots, Two Revolutions, and a Tragic Betrayal of Freedom in the New Nation
By Gary B. Nash & Graham Russell Gao Hodges (Colgate professor)

Six months after Thomas Jefferson died - on that iconic date of July 4, 1826 - there was an auction at his beloved Monticello. Along with horses and cattle, household furniture, even a marble bust of him, there were 130 slaves to be sold off, advertised as "the most valuable for their number ever offered at one time in the state of Virginia."

It stands as a sad ending to the life of the great champion of liberty, freedom, and equality whose conflicted position on slavery has been well documented.

But there is an even sadder story behind that tragic event that is detailed by historians Gary B. Nash and Graham Russell Gao Hodges in "Friends of Liberty," their absorbing account of the intertwined lives of Jefferson, the Polish patriot Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and Agrippa Hull, a free black who served as Kosciuszko's orderly during the American Revolution and lived in Stockbridge, Mass.

There is in Kosciuszko a lost-cause heroism and in Hull an antic humor, but the underlying story of the three "friends of liberty" is the "betrayal of freedom" that culminated in the Monticello slave auction.

It was during the Revolution that Kosciuszko not only developed a close personal relationship with Hull but, as the authors note, "his admiration for black Americans grew as the war wore on, and so did his revulsion at chattel slavery." Of particular importance was their strength and skill in building fortifications, bridges, and roadways at West Point.

Jefferson and Kosciuszko may have met during the Revolution - although not for certain until the fall of 1797, after Kosciuszko returned to the United States a man without a country, following the defeat of the Polish insurrection he had led against Russia.

By then, the authors write, Jefferson's "fertile mind had been churning on slavery and the character of African Americans" and "in the company of Kosciuszko" was "primed for a spirited discussion about liberty and slavery."

The culmination of that relationship was Kosciuszko's will, written in April 1798 before he returned to Europe, in which he stated that Jefferson "should bye out of my money" - back pay still due him from his service during the Revolution - "So many Negroes and free them, that the restante [remaining] sums should be Sufficient to give them education and provide for ther maintenance."

Kosciuszko died in October 1817, but Jefferson was torn about fulfilling the terms of the will. His position, the authors write, was that slaves, whether his own or those of other planters, should "be prepared for freedom before emancipation." Not only did that reverse Kosciuszko's directive, but such schools did not exist.

The matter was finally resolved when the US Supreme Court ruled in 1852, in a case brought by claimants for Kosciuszko's estate, that the will was void because of "the uncertainty of its dispositions and the objects of its bounty," and his estate was awarded to two nieces living in Poland.

Hull, the third "friend of liberty," apparently never met Jefferson, and had returned to Stockbridge at the war's end after serving as Kosciuszko's orderly for nearly five years. But, the authors argue, he had influenced Kosciuszko in his thinking about slavery, which in turn led to his involvement with Jefferson.

The "defining moment" of Hull's relationship with Kosciuszko brings a note of levity to an otherwise bleak account that ends on a note of betrayal. One evening while Kosciuszko was expected to be away from West Point, Hull indulged in a "king-for-a-day" revel, a tradition among black New Englanders, inviting other black soldiers to a feast over which he presided, dressed in one of Kosciuszko's Polish uniforms.

Kosciuszko returned unexpectedly, but rather than punishing Hull, "continued the role reversal game." The incident, the authors write, showed that Kosciuszko "was at ease with the free black men with whom he mingled." As for Hull, for the rest of his life he "delighted in telling the story, and his listeners delighted in hearing it."

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WASHINGTON -- The woman accused of being the "D.C. Madam" plans to call Sen. David Vitter, R-La., as a defense witness, her attorney said in court Monday as the high-profile racketeering and money-laundering trial got under way.

Vitter's name is among those listed as potential witnesses at the outset of the trial of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, 52, who ran a $250-per-hour escort service that the government says was a front for prostitution. Palfrey has said her business was a legitimate escort service and her employees signed contracts stating that they would not do anything illegal.

Vitter has not been charged. The senator's cell phone number appears six times in the phone records of Palfrey's service, Pamela Martin & Associates, between 1999 and 2001 when he was a member of the House of Representatives.

Being listed as a witness does not automatically mean that Vitter will be called to testify. His attorney asked U.S. District Judge James Robertson last week to quash the subpoena, saying that his client would refuse to answer questions citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, which would not help Palfrey's case. Robertson refused to void the subpoena.

While invoking the Fifth Amendment likely avoids the possibility of embarrassing details being aired in public, political experts say it carries other risks.

"I'd guess the Fifth Amendment response would not play well at all, and would draw a response of 'What has he got to hide?' from many people," said Michael Johnston, a political scientist from Colgate University who has written about the public's perception of corruption.

Johnston said a better political course would be to "get the story out there and put up with the bad publicity and Jay Leno jokes for a few more days." Vitter is not up for re-election until 2010.

Washington lawyer Stan Brand said the only member of Congress he remembers taking the Fifth is his former client Dan Rostenkowski, a former Democratic congressman from Illinois. Rostenkowski invoked the Fifth Amendment in the early 1990s when he was asked to testify before a grand jury investigating corruption charges in the House. He survived the political fallout, but lost re-election several years later after being indicted on corruption charges.

"It's a legal decision, and the political consequences aren't known," Brand said.

'He's trapped'

Ed Renwick, director of the Institute of Politics at Loyola University in New Orleans, said there are no good options for Vitter.

"He's trapped," Renwick said. "Taking the Fifth is never popular, because people can think whatever they want to think. On the other hand, if he says some juicy things, it's not good, either. . . . I don't know if it makes much difference which option he goes for."

Palfrey's trial is expected to last up to four weeks and feature testimony from 14 of the more than 100 escorts who worked for Pamela Martin & Associates between 1993 and 2006. Given immunity, they are expected to say that they performed sex acts for money with Palfrey's knowledge and sent her half the proceeds from each encounter.

Prosecutors also are expected to call at least one client, Harlan Ullman, a retired Navy commander who developed the concept of "shock and awe" to refer to the overwhelming use of military force. Ullman's attorney would not say whether his client had been granted immunity.

"These people will be coming in here and taking the hottest seat in Washington this week and possibly this year," Assistant U.S. Attorney Catherine Connolly told the jury of eight women and six men, including two alternates.

Defense strategy

In his opening statement, Palfrey's attorney Preston Burton said Palfrey was a legitimate businesswoman who peddled sexual fantasies, not sex. He said Palfrey issued IRS 1099 forms to the escorts, paid income taxes and had all the women sign contracts promising not to engage in any illegal activities. At one point, he said, she made a police complaint and filed a civil suit against one of the women for holding back money.

"That's not what an illegal business does," Burton said.

He described Palfrey as a "taxi dispatcher," setting up appointments between male clients and young women.

"If they crossed the line, that's on them," he said. "But courtesy of those folks, my client is the only one charged."

Vitter does not appear to face any legal liability in the case. None of the thousands of Palfrey's male clients has been charged, and Vitter's last documented contact with the escort service is beyond the statute of limitations on solicitation.

But as Louisiana political analyst Wayne Parent said, Vitter's chief concern isn't legal, but political.

"Every time this story is in the news, it hurts Sen. Vitter politically," Parent said. "In this situation, there is no good strategy, only less harmful ones. Whatever choice he decides to make, he'll likely see it come up in 2010 when he runs for re-election."

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Established as one of the world's first Internet-based resources for reporters in 1993, ProfNet (www.profnet.com) today enables reporters to query 4000 colleges, universities, corporations and other organizations in North America and Europe. ProfNet relays queries from more than 100 reporters daily to its international network of public relations officers and also offers reporters a database with more than 10 000 expert profiles created and maintained by public relations officers.

"We're delighted to offer reporters outside of Africa the opportunity to connect with sources from a rapidly expanding number of African institutions," said Karen Dyke, who is managing the ProfNet service in Africa. "Similarly, we're pleased to offer reporters in Africa a means for more efficiently link with experts in Africa and in other world regions."

Among South African institutions that reporters may now query via ProfNet, are the University of Cape Town, Stellenbosch University, Rhodes University and the University of the Witwatersrand, Dyke noted.

As the first African institution to join the network in the mid-1990s, Rhodes University has played a pivotal role in ProfNet's development through the "Highway Africa" conference hosted annually by its Department of Journalism and Media Studies. "African reporters now have a way to reach beyond their traditional sources for expert commentary," noted Guy Berger, head of the Rhodes University Department of Journalism and Media Studies. "The fact that ProfNet verifies the expert's credentials is key. The system puts them in touch with experts in their own countries as well as opens the door to accessing top minds around the world."

The University of Cape Town also is assisting by hosting two interns this summer from Colgate University in the US. Working with ProfNet staff and UCT's public relations department, the students will assist in registering and profiling African public relations professionals and experts. Colgate is jointly funding the internships with ProfNet as an extension of its study-abroad programs.

In cooperation with the World Free Press Institute, ProfNet will offer African reporters and news organizations convenient links to experts in free press issues, newspaper management, economic reporting, investigative reporting, and creating successful newspapers in emerging democracies. The institute has conducted professional development workshops for 400 reporters in Africa with the assistance of grants from the United Nations, the Ford Foundation, and the Eurasia Foundation, said Clayton Haswell, WFPI president.

Free to reporters and to participating colleges and universities in Africa, ProfNet is supported by annual fees from corporations and PR agencies, which participate fully in the online interaction with reporters.

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The Koran is the ultimate authority in Islam. For centuries, the holy book has guided Muslims on weighty issues like faith and ethics and such practical matters as marriage and inheritance. Like the Scriptures of Judaism and Christianity, the Koran is considered a revelation from the same God who revealed himself to Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Many of the prophets revered by Christians and Jews are also honored in the Koran. And first-time readers of the Koran may be surprised to find Noah and his ark, Joseph's brothers, and Mary's Immaculate Conception.

And yet, despite the similarities, the Koran is not the Muslim Bible. And it is the differences in the ways that the Koran and Jewish and Christian Scriptures developed that illuminate the most critical distinctions in Islam.

Unlike the Bible, the Koran was not written by men; it was revealed by God through the angel Gabriel to Muhammad over little more than two decades. The Bible, for its part, was written by many men, in multiple languages, and compiled over several centuries. Says Jane Dam-men McAuliffe, dean of the College of Georgetown University and general editor of the Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an: "There's a whole process of collection and redaction."

According to Islamic tradition, the Prophet Muhammad received divine revelations, starting around the year 610, and recited them in the public square. But since he was illiterate, he wrote nothing down. (Koran itself means "recitation.") At the time of Muhammad's death in 632, therefore, the Koran existed not as a written book but only as a memorized document, alive in the hearts of those who had heard the Prophet speak and as random notes they had jotted on bones or parchment. Compiling the text became the job of Muhammad's secretary, Zaid ibn Thabit, who completed the task between 644 and 656. The reigning caliph at the time, Uthman, declared Zaid's work the official version of the Koran and ordered all other copies destroyed. Since then, Zaid's text has been off limits to additions or subtractions of any kind. "There could be no Koranic equivalent of the elevation to scriptural status of the letters of St. Paul," writes Thomas Lippman in his book Understanding Islam.

The timing of the revelations is also crucial to understanding the Koran. Muslims believe that Muhammad is the "seal of the prophets," the last prophet God has sent to humankind. The Koran, consequently, serves to complete—or, in some views, to correct—the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Islamic tradition, which derives from both the Koran and the Sunna, the narratives of Muhammad's life, holds that in their original form, God's revelations to Moses and to Jesus were completely compatible with the Koran but that they were later corrupted—either inadvertently or deliberately.

"Historically, the idea is that at some undefined time, Jews and Christians collaborated to delete references to the coming of Muhammad," says David Cook, assistant professor of religious studies at Rice University. "The idea came from the fact that certain verses and ideas in the Koran are incompatible with those in the Bible, which is chronologically earlier, and therefore the answer to this incompatibility must be a malevolent process of deletion or suppression." Omid Safi, an associate professor of religion at Colgate University, sees it differently. "My reading of early Islamic history is that Jews were criticized for coming up with a legal tradition that was more strict than that which God had required of them originally, whereas Christians are criticized for the doctrine of the Trinity."

While there is overlap with the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, the Koran often differs significantly. Islamic tradition holds that Jesus was neither God nor the Son of God but "no more than God's apostle...God is but one God. God forbid that he should have a son!" the Koran reads. Muhammad is on an equal footing with Jesus—and indeed Muslims are instructed to respect all of God's prophets equally. Christians "expect some Christ figure to stand at the center of the [Koranic] text," Safi says, but for Muslims, "there is no God incarnate, no salvific figure, nor a need for one."

Rather than being a chronology, the Koran's 114 suras, or chapters, are generally laid out according to length, from longest (286 verses) to shortest (three verses). Believed by Muslims to have been arranged by Muhammad according to divine instruction, the Koran opens with a brief invocation that is traditionally followed by a sura known as "The Cow"—which delivers a miscellany of unrelated information including the saga of Adam and Eve, God's warnings to the children of Israel, fasting during Ramadan, and the rules governing divorce.
The order can be a challenge to non-Muslims. "People who start out from the Bible expect that every Scripture should begin with Genesis and should end with a book of Revelation," says Safi. "They expect Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Koran to state, 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.' "

Compounding the difficulty for beginners, the Koran assumes that readers are already familiar with the stories of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, at least in the broad sense. "What in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures is often prolonged narrative is, in the Koran, short, alluding to [well-known] stories," McAuliffe says.

The language of the Islamic holy book is also of terrific importance: All of God's revela-tions were delivered to Muhammad in Arabic, and the Koran is the first book in the Arabic tongue. Whereas missionaries have translated the New Testament into hundreds of languages to extend its reach while never questioning its authenticity, traditional Muslims treat all translations of the Koran as merely interpretations. What is lost in translation, they believe, is not only the original meaning but also the literal and lyrical power of the language of God. "We can read the Bible in English and feel that we are reading the Bible," McAuliffe says, "but Muslims cannot pick up an Indonesian version and think that they're reading the Koran."

Indeed, for Muslims, Arabic is the sole language of ritual prayer. Going back to the tradition of recitation begun by Muhammad, the Koran is primarily an aural experience—"something you hear rather than something you read," McAuliffe notes—and something that even the youngest children are taught to memorize. "Their experience is of beautiful sounds in Arabic recited by people who are very accomplished. An analogy would be if our experience of the Bible were through Gregorian chants."

Recitation is not only an art form but also a lucrative career for the most accomplished reciters, who speak in public and on television and audiotape.

But while the words of the Koran never vary, their meanings are open to interpretation, in part because Arabic originally contained no vowels. In this sense, the Koran is similar to other scriptures, which have also generated controversies about interpretation. Over the centuries, the Koran has spawned countless commentaries, including the first guidance from Muhammad, to help explain the text.

Furthermore, "the Koran speaks with a number of different voices," Cook says. For instance, the Koran's degree of tolerance for Christians and Jews seems to change from one verse to another. The portrayal of God is another example of the Koran's variations. He is all transcendent in some verses and intimate—closer than the "jugular vein"—in others.

Some scholars attribute the changes in message to differences in the times at which Muhammad's recitations were revealed. During the first, or Meccan, period of Muhammad's life, the language was one of peace, stressing monotheism. After Muhammad left for Medina, under attack from polytheistic Mecca, the recitations became increasingly political; the Muslim community was looking to God's guidance through the Koran to help orient it. That's why "it's fruitless to engage in debates about is Islam inherently x or y," says Roxanne Euben, an associate professor of political science at Wellesley College. "The Koran is indeterminate of what it means to be a good Muslim."

The arguments among Muslims today are not over whether the Koran represents divine guidance, says Safi, but rather how the Koran is to be interpreted—whether some verses are to be highlighted over others—and the processes of interpretation that are brought to the text. People turn to different verses of the Koran to justify their own agendas, says McAuliffe. One such debate turns on whether men and women are created with equal rights and dignity or whether men are inherently superior to women. Another is whether warfare is a natural state or something people resort to when attacked. Nonetheless, Safi concludes, it is in this text—"magical and mystical, historical and divine"—that Muslims continue to confront reality and existence, seeking to conform to God's will.

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