INGRAM COLUMN: Lafayette the Nation’s Guest

Editor’s Note: This year marks the Bicentennial, 2024-2025, of Lafayette and his farewell tour, “Guest of the Nation”, which took place August 15, 1824-September 7, 1825. To commemorate the occasion, the LaGrange Daily News will be publishing a series of columns by Richard Ingram, a longtime resident of LaGrange and Chair of Friends of Lafayette.

L afayette is an idea. Ideas have consequences. Chateaubriand, when Lafayette died said, “M. de Lafayette had only one idea. . . It was the one of the century.” That idea was Liberty. Lafayette fixed on it, and said Chateaubriand, “Whatever is fixed is fatal, and what is fatal is powerful.” Lafayette’s view of Liberty, however, did not find freedom in a framework of rights from which one pursues his or her own ends and values; his Liberty, rather, had to do with the freedom self-government permits, and which requires citizens be committed to the common good. Lafayette, likely unaware, was guilty of moral imagination.

From Frenchtown into Chesapeake Bay toward Baltimore on the evening of October 7, 1824, aboard the steamboat “The United States,” the Committee of Arrangements had set up a guest room with three beds for Lafayette, his son George, and his secretary Levasseur. Everyone else bedded down on the floor in the dining hall converted to a dormitory, including Secretary of State and soon to be President John Quincy Adams. Levasseur was amazed and impressed at America’s egalitarian spirt, that a high-ranking official would deign to a mat with everybody else. Lafayette interceded, in the name of friendship, to have another bed placed in the guest room and persuaded Mr. Adams to accede to its use.

At 9 AM next morning “The United States” was surrounded by steamboats: “The Maryland,” “The Virginia,” “The Philadelphia,” and “The Eagle,” all loaded with citizens come to greet Lafayette and escort him to the shore at Fort McHenry, Baltimore, where more throngs assembled to get a glimpse. Lafayette reviewed the garrison. Lawyer Francis Scott Key, negotiating a prisoner swap, happened to be on a vessel in the harbor when the British began to bombard Fort McHenry on September 13, 1814. Seeing the American flag still waving next morning inspired him to write, ”The Defence of Fort M’Henry,” later renamed “The Star Spangled Banner,” and designated our national anthem in 1931.

George Washington Parke Custis, Washington’s step-grandson, arranged to have Washington’s field tent deployed at Fort McHenry. This thoughtful gesture moved Lafayette greatly. The tent is now on display at the Museum of American Revolution, Philadelphia.

Five days at Baltimore: citizen reception at the Exchange; conferring of an honorary Doctor of Laws on the third floor of Davidge Hall, University of Maryland, where today a plaque on the floor marks the spot; and high mass at the Roman Catholic Cathedral with Charles Carroll and Governor Stevens.

Lafayette arrived at the capital thirty-seven miles away on October 12. First, to the capitol rotunda; then to the White House, where he was greeted by President Monroe, his family, and the country’s leadership, all in one room, seated at one table. Levasseur, interestingly, observed, “Mrs. Monroe, although having passed the age of fifty, can still be cited as a remarkably beautiful women,” which implies, for him at least, fifty is the inflection point for dilapidation. Major General of Engineers Macomb volunteered that none in government seated at that table “would dream of enriching himself,” and would leave their posts less wealthy than when they arrived, their salaries too meager to feed the vice of greed.

Lafayette and Monroe were both at Valley Forge and the Battle of Monmouth, but Lafayette’s loyalty to Monroe stemmed from Monroe’s service as Minister to France when he and his predecessor Gouverneur Morris made it clear to the French government that should Lafayette’s wife Adrienne, then in the queue for the guillotine during the Reign of Terror, come to harm consequences would follow. Monroe and Morris saved her life.

The remainder of the week to Columbia College, now George Washington University; the Jesuit College at Georgetown; and a visit with George Washinton’s step-granddaughter Martha Parke Custis Peter.

The post INGRAM COLUMN: Lafayette the Nation’s Guest appeared first on LaGrange Daily News .