The Boys Life of Lafayette 32
He sailed on July 12, 1824, not, however, upon the United States
frigate, but on the _Cadmus_, a regular packet-boat, preferring, he
said, to come as a private individual. His son accompanied him, as did
[Pg 260]Col. A. Lavasseur, who acted as his secretary. These, with his
faithful valet, Bastien, made up his entire retinue, though he might
easily have had a regiment of followers, so many were the applications
of enthusiastic young men who seemed to look upon this as some new
sort of military expedition. On the _Cadmus_ he asked fellow-travelers
about American hotels and the cost of travel by stage and steamboat,
and M. Lavasseur made careful note of the answers. He had no idea of
the reception that awaited him. When the _Cadmus_ sailed into New York
harbor and he saw every boat gay with bunting and realized that every
man, woman, and child to whom coming was possible had come out to meet
him, he was completely overcome. "It will burst!" he cried, pressing
his hands to his heart, while tears rolled down his cheeks.
Whether he wished or no, he found himself the nation's guest. The
country not only stopped its work and its play to give him greeting;
it stopped its politics--and beyond that Americans cannot go. It was
a campaign summer, but men forgot for a time whether they were for
Adams or Crawford, Clay or Jackson. Election Day was three months off,
politics could wait; but nobody could wait to see this man who had come
to them out of the past from the days of the Revolution, whose memory
was their country's most glorious heritage. They gave him salutes and
dinners and receptions. They elected him to all manner of societies.
Mills and factories closed and the employees surged forth to shout
[Pg 261]themselves hoarse as they jostled mayors and judges in the
welcome. Dignified professors found themselves battling in a crowd of
their own students to get near his carriage. Our whole hard-headed,
practical nation burst into what it fondly believed to be poetry in
honor of his coming. Even the inmates of New York's Debtors' Prison
sent forth such an effusion of many stanzas. If these were not real
poems, the authors never suspected it. There was truth in them, at any
rate. "Again the hero comes to tread the sacred soil for which he bled"
was the theme upon which they endlessly embroidered. Occasionally the
law sidestepped in his honor. A deputy sheriff in New England pinned
upon his door this remarkable "Notice. Arrests in civil suits postponed
to-day, sacred to Freedom and Freedom's Friend."
Lafayette arrived in August and remained until September of the
following year, and during that time managed, to tread an astonishing
amount of our sacred soil, considering that he came before the day
of railroads. The country he had helped to create had tripled in
population, and, instead of being merely a narrow strip along the
Atlantic, now stretched westward a thousand miles. He visited all the
states and all the principal towns. It was not only in towns that he
was welcomed. At the loneliest crossroads a musket-shot or a bugle-call
brought people magically together. The sick were carried out on
mattresses and wrung his hand and thanked God. Babies were named for
him. One bore through life the whole name Welcome Lafayette. Miles of
[Pg 262]babies already named were held up for him to see--and perhaps
to kiss. Old soldiers stretched out hands almost as feeble as those
of babies in efforts to detain him and fight their battles o'er. With
these he was very tender. Small boys drew "Lafayette fish" out of the
brooks on summer days, and when he came to their neighborhood ran
untold distances to get sight of him. Often he helped them to points
of vantage from which they could see something more than forests of
grown-up backs and legs during the ceremonies which took place before
court-houses and state-houses. Here little girls, very much washed and
curled, presented him with useless bouquets and lisped those artless
odes of welcome. Sometimes they tried to crown him with laurel, a
calamity he averted with a deft hand. Back of the little girls usually
stood a phalanx of larger maidens in white, carrying banners, who were
supposed to represent the states of the Union; and back of the maidens
was sometimes a wonderful triumphal arch built of scantling and covered
with painted muslin, the first achievement of its kind in local history.
The country was really deeply moved by Lafayette's visit. It meant to
honor him to the full, but it saw no reason to hide the fact that it
had done something for him as well. "The Nation's Guest. France gave
him birth; America gave him Immortality," was a statement that kept
everybody, nations and individuals alike, in their proper places. In
short, the welcome America gave Lafayette was hearty and sincere.
Whether it appeared as brilliant to the guest of honor, accustomed from
[Pg 263]youth to pageants at Versailles, as it did to his hosts we may
doubt. It was occasionally hard for M. Lavasseur to appear impressed
and not frankly astonished at the things he saw. Lafayette enjoyed it
all thoroughly. The difficult rôle fell to his son George, who had
neither the interest of novelty nor of personal triumph to sustain
him. He already knew American ways, and it was equally impossible for
him to join in the ovation or to acknowledge greetings not meant for
himself. He made himself useful by taking possession of the countless
invitations showered upon his father and arranging an itinerary to
embrace as many of them as possible.
[Illustration: MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE IN 1824
From a painting by William Birch]
[Illustration: MADAME DE LAFAYETTE
After a miniature in the possession of the family]
To those who have been wont to think of this American triumphal
progress of Lafayette's as steady and slow, stopping only for
demonstrations of welcome and rarely if ever doubling on its tracks,
it is a relief to learn that Lafayette did occasionally rest. He
made Washington, the capital of the country, his headquarters, and
set out from there on longer or shorter journeys. The town had not
existed, indeed had scarcely been dreamed of, for a decade after
his first visit. What he thought of the straggling place, with its
muddy, stump-infested avenues, we shall never know. He had abundant
imagination--which was one reason the town existed; for without
imagination he would never have crossed the ocean to fight for American
liberty. Among the people he saw about him in Washington during the
official ceremonies were many old friends and many younger faces
mysteriously like them. To that striking sentence in Henry Clay's
[Pg 264]address of welcome in the House of Representatives, "General,
you find yourself here in the midst of posterity," he could answer,
with truth and gallantry, "No, Mr. Speaker, posterity has not yet begun
for me, for I find in these sons of my old friends the same political
ideals and, I may add, the same warm sentiments toward myself that I
have already had the happiness to enjoy in their fathers."
His great friend Washington had gone to his rest; but there were
memories of Washington at every turn. He made a visit to Mount Vernon
and spent a long hour at his friend's tomb. He entered Yorktown
following Washington's old campaign tent, a relic which was carried
ahead of the Lafayette processions in that part of the country, in
a spirit almost as reverent as that the Hebrews felt toward the Ark
of the Covenant. At Yorktown the ceremonies were held near the Rock
Redoubt which Lafayette's command had so gallantly taken. Zachary
Taylor, who was to gain fame as a general himself and to be President
of the United States, presented a laurel wreath, which Lafayette turned
from a compliment to himself to a tribute to his men. "You know, sir,"
he said, "that in this business of storming redoubts with unloaded
arms and fixed bayonets, the merit of the deed lies in the soldiers
who execute it," and he accepted the crown "in the name of the light
infantry--those we have lost as well as those who survive."
Farther south, at Camden, he laid the corner-stone of a monument to his
friend De Kalb; and at Savannah performed the same labor of love for
[Pg 265]one erected in honor of Nathanael Greene and of Pulaski. At
Charleston, also, he met Achille Marat, come from his home in Florida
to talk with Lafayette about his father, who met his death at the hands
of Charlotte Corday during the French Revolution. There were many
meetings in America to remind him of his life abroad. Francis Huger
joined him for a large part of his journey; he saw Dubois Martin, now
a jaunty old gentleman of eighty-three. It was he who had bought _La
Victoire_ for Lafayette's runaway journey. In New Jersey he dined with
Joseph Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, who was living there quietly
with his daughter and son-in-law.
Both on the Western frontier and at the nation's capital he met Indian
chiefs with garments more brilliant and manners quite as dignified
as kings ever possessed. In a time of freshet in the West he became
the guest of an Indian named Big Warrior and spent the night in his
savage home. On another night he came near accepting unwillingly the
hospitality of the Ohio River, for the steamboat upon which he was
traveling caught fire, after the manner of river boats of that era,
and "burned a hole in the night" and disappeared. He lost many of his
belongings in consequence, including his hat, but not his serenity or
even a fraction of his health, though the accident occurred in the
pouring rain.
Everywhere, particularly in the West, he came to towns and counties
bearing his own name. In the East he revisited with his son spots made
memorable in the Revolution. On the Hudson he rose early to point out
[Pg 266]to George the place where André had been taken and the house
to which he and Washington had come so soon after Arnold's precipitate
flight. At West Point he reviewed the cadets, slim and straight and
young, while General Scott and General Brown, both tall, handsome
men, looking very smart indeed in their plumes and dress uniforms,
stood beside their visitor, who was almost as tall and military in his
bearing and quite as noticeable for the neatness and plainness of his
civilian dress.
Lafayette was broader of shoulder and distinctly heavier than he had
been forty years before. Even in his youth he had not been handsome,
though he possessed for Americans the magnetism his son so sadly
lacked. His once fair complexion had turned brown and his once reddish
hair had turned gray, but that was a secret concealed under a chestnut
wig. He carried a cane and walked with a slight limp, which Americans
attributed enthusiastically to his wound in their service, but which
was really caused by that fall upon the ice in 1803. Despite his
checkered fortunes his sixty-eight years had passed lightly over his
head. Perhaps he did not altogether relish being addressed as Venerable
Sir by mayors and town officials, any more than he liked to have laurel
wreaths pulling his wig awry, but he knew that both were meant in
exquisite politeness.
And, true Frenchman that he was, he never allowed himself to be outdone
in politeness. Everywhere incidents occurred, trivial enough, but very
charming in spirit, that have been treasured in memory and handed down
to this day. In New London two rival congregations besought him to [Pg
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