The poster is intriguing. What is this “Lafayette party”? We are of course talking about the most famous Frenchman in the United States, whose name is inscribed in every city: streets, counties, schools, when it is not the city itself – more than 75.
I enter Anderson House, a Beaux-Arts mansion, headquarters of the Institute of the American Revolution, on Massachusetts Avenue. It is not on any list of “museums to see in Washington,” a city where the risk of museum poisoning is high. But it is here that the celebrations of this feast which will be held for the good marquis all year round in several States begin this spring.
Because if La Fayette lived through two revolutions, he preferred the American one. In return, his heroic figure is still celebrated by the Americans, while he is relegated to the dusty rank of secondary characters in France.
This year marks the bicentennial of an improbable triumphal tour by Lafayette in each of the 24 states that the Union included in 1824, where thousands of people came to see the legendary character. Hence the party. It not only commemorates the soldier, but above all the humanist.
IMAGE FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
George Washington, first president of the United States
Perhaps most notable in this tiny exhibit are the letters La Fayette wrote to George Washington, his “second father,” to promote the end of slavery.
“He told Washington that history would judge him better, and that he would be even more admired if he freed the slaves – starting with his own,” Chuck Schwam, director of the American Friends of Lafayette, told me.
“What I admire most about him is his commitment to human rights. »
At the end of 1776, when news of the American Declaration of Independence reached Paris, La Fayette was 19 years old. “My heart was enlisted, and I only thought of joining my flags,” he wrote in his memoirs.
It is not so much the American cause that excites him, but the idea of fighting the English (who killed his father in the war). He does not hide an “enthusiasm for glorious anecdotes” and the ambition “to travel the world in search of reputation”.
His plan worked well…
La Fayette had no military experience, and he failed to convince the King of France to finance his project. No matter: he is one of the richest men in France. He chartered a ship himself and landed in South Carolina, a complete stranger, to take the road to Philadelphia, the capital.
“There were already several French mercenaries fighting for the Americans, and Washington was initially suspicious. There were enough people coming for the money and he told Congress to stop sending him money. But Benjamin Franklin was so impressed by his enthusiasm that he saw clearly that he was not coming for the money. He convinced Washington. »
IMAGE FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Depiction of English forces surrendering to American and French forces after the Battle of Yorktown, 1781
Washington, who had no son, quickly took a liking to the young man and appointed him aide-de-camp. Until the end of the war, in 1783, La Fayette was entrusted with several missions – including the abortive one of going to Montreal in winter to rally the “Canadians”. Historians recognize an important role in several battles, including that of Yorktown, considered decisive, in 1781. At that time, King Louis XVI helped massively finance the war, obviously not to promote republican ideas, but to weaken England in North America.
Back in France, La Fayette was at the forefront of the following revolution. He wrote a first version (not accepted) of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, largely inspired by that of the United States, with the help of Thomas Jefferson.
While he unsuccessfully pleaded in France for an English-style constitutional monarchy, Washington, for his part, learned with horror that everyone was being guillotined, and did not like at all the appearance of this new republic. . La Fayette was excluded from circles of power under Napoleon and without a major role during the restorations.
The friendship between him and the first president never wavered. Lafayette also named his son George Washington Lafayette. “Few people besides La Fayette have succeeded in breaking through the veneer behind which Washington protected itself,” says Chuck Schwam.
Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette was 66 years old when James Monroe, the fifth president, invited him to go on a reconnaissance tour to show him the excitement of this country which was not yet 50 years old.
La Fayette arrived in New York on August 15, 1824. “He planned to stay 12 weeks in the United States, but he was so successful that he stayed 13 months! New York at the time had 120,000 people, but 80,000 people came to see it! »
Even dividing the numbers by two or three is something of a triumph.
In the coming year, he will go to every city and see that slavery betrays the ideals of the Constitution. He will meet Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, himself a slaveholder – and father of several children with a wife he “owned”. He will come away very disappointed to see that abolition, for which he has actively campaigned in Europe for 40 years, is not the least on the agenda in America.
“I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America if I had known that I would be helping to found a slave state,” he told Thomas Clarkson, an English abolitionist.
In a letter to Washington, 40 years earlier, La Fayette had proposed an emancipation project which consisted of proving that agriculture where workers were free and paid was profitable. Washington avoided the subject. But La Fayette made it happen: he bought land in French Guiana and hired 70 Afro-descendant workers who he freed. Frederick Douglass considered him a true abolitionist – among many opportunists in the cause.
His deep disappointment did not prevent him from loving the new country.
A testimony can be found in George Washington’s former home in Mount Vernon. It is there, and not in France, that we can see the key to the Bastille. La Fayette had recovered it on the first day of the French Revolution, and handed it over to its spiritual father, a symbol of liberation in both countries.
Why commemorate this tour of La Fayette, 200 years later?
“Because we still have work to do,” Mr. Schwam said. This world of equality that he dreamed of has not yet been achieved. »
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