Casimir Pulaski lies buried beneath this marble monument

Casimir Pulaski arrived in America to fight for independence. On 9 October 1779, during an attempt to retake Savannah from the British, he led a cavalry charge toward a gap in the enemy line at the Spring Hill Redoubt. During this assault, which became one of the bloodiest hours of the Revolutionary War, Pulaski was shot. He was carried to an American ship named the Wasp, where he died on 11 October 1779.

The location of his grave remained a mystery for generations. Some believed he was buried at sea, while others claimed his remains were interred at a property called Greenwich that had been occupied by French troops. Eventually, a skeleton was recovered from that site and placed beneath this monument, which was finished in 1854. Dr. Richard D. Arnold chaired the commissioners who raised 20,000 dollars by public subscription to build it, and the sculptor Robert Eberhard Launitz designed the figure of Liberty to crown the work.

When the monument underwent repairs in the 1990s, the remains were exhumed for forensic study. Anthropologists Charles Merbs and Karen Burns examined the bones, noting that the height, age at death, and hip joint changes consistent with a life on horseback matched Pulaski. However, the pelvis appeared female, creating a conflict that remained unresolved for two decades.

In 2019, researchers funded by the Smithsonian Institution performed a DNA analysis. By matching mitochondrial DNA from the remains to a grandniece of the general, they confirmed the skeleton belonged to Pulaski. The forensic evidence indicates that Pulaski was intersex. The Smithsonian Channel documentary titled America's Hidden Stories: The General Was Female? detailed these findings after the 2019 publication of the research.