With Lafayette in America

Foreword

NOT many years since I knew familiarly an old lady nearing her centenary who had seen and been blessed by Lafayette. In her quavering voice she would repeat the lines she and her schoolmates had recited on the day when the distinguished Frenchman, in his sixty-seventh year, had driven through her New Jersey village. Her eyes would kindle as she related the particulars of his reception, the triumphal arch which the village people had quickly reared when it was known he would come their way, the flowers the children plucked to throw in his path, the excitement of the minister who was chosen to address him. As I listened to the story, a vanished generation lived again, to whom the visit of Lafayette was cause for such rejoicing that cannon rocked the land and States vied with States for the honor of his pres-

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Foreword

ence; while behind that world of 1824 another world was faintly shadowed, peopled with those who had loved and known Lafayette the youth, who had served with him in battle and shivered with him in camp.

And then the old lady died and I heard the name of Lafayette no more. In the histories he was dismissed with a brief mention that seemed inadequate to explain the enthusiasm that he had aroused so generally in his lifetime. Weighed in the cold balance of posterity his contribution to American freedom seemed no greater than that of a half-dozen other foreign-born officers. But to the story of Lafayette there was yet another chapter.

The Great War broke over the world. America called on thousands of young men to cross the sea to join in the fight on the side of England, Italy, Belgium — France. There were books and articles without end explaining the cause, justifying America's action. But abstract

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Foreword

principles seldom fire the blood. What, then, kindled a genuine enthusiasm within a million breasts? The learned have found it absurd, but again it was the name of Lafayette. He, a Frenchman, had stood by us when we needed help. Americans in his name owed it to him to lend a hand in France's desperate hour. There it was in a nutshell. The humblest, most illiterate lad in khaki could understand. A youth of nineteen in buff and blue beckoned them on. Lafayette was France. If France disclaimed it, so much the worse for her. Across the sea they went, therefore, those thousands, Romance at the helm. "We are coming, Lafayette,*' they sang. And their mood found full expression when the Commander-in-chief of the American army, laying a wreath on the hero's tomb, said simply, "Lafayette, we have come."

And so it is of this Lafayette, whose name could thrice stir America, of whom I shall write. If the sketches in the successive chapters can

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Foreword

give to the past anything of the vivid reality of the old lady^s narration, I shall count myself happy.

Oct AVI A Roberts

Boston, July 4, igig

Part I: The Marquis

I. A Long Voyage and a Southern Welcome 3

II. Philadelphia 20

III. Old Battle-Grounds 30

IV. Bethlehem 51 V. Valley Forge 66

VI. FiLANCE — An Interlude 83

VII. Two Young Men 100

VIII. YoRKTOWN 120

Part II: The Nation^ s Guest

I. New York greets Lafayette 147

II. Philadelphia greets Lafayette 164

III. The Stories the Rivers Tell 177

IV. Visits to Great Men 200

V. The Cordial Southern Cities 222 VI. The Frontier 240

VII. In the Cradle of American Liberty 261

VIII. In the City of Washington 279

ILLUSTRATIONS

Lafayette Photogravure Frontispiece

From the portrait by Charles Wilson Peak

Charleston in 1780 14

From an old print

Old State House, Philadelphia .... 22

From an engraving by J. Rogers, published by Virtue, Emmons & Co., New York, in 1857

The State House Yard, Philadelphia, as enclosed DURING THE REVOLUTION .... 26

From a heliotype in Etting's Historical Account of the Old State House of Pennsylvania (Boston, 1876)

The Old Church at Freehold, New Jersey . . 42

From an engraving by J. Smillie

From an old print

La Marquise de Lafayette 84

From a woodcut in De Lescure's Les Grandes Epouses (Paris, 1884) after a pastel portrait

Sv^^ord presented to Lafayette by the United States Congress 96

From a woodcut in Cloquet's Souvenirs du General Lafayette

The Beverley-Robinson House at Garrison's, New York 112

From an old woodcut

Lafayette's Headquarters at Richmond . .130

From a woodcut made in 1858

Lafayette 145

From an engraving after the painting by Ary SchefFer

View OF Hell Gate 154

From a mezzotint by M. Merigot, published March I, 1807, by James Cundee, Albion Press, London

Illustrations

Silk Handkerchief printed in Germantown, Pennsylvania, to Commemorate Lafayette's Visit TO Philadelphia IN 1824 166

Reception to Lafayette at the Chew House, Philadelphia 170

From a painting

Mount Vernon 186

From an old lithograph by E. Sachse & Co., Baltimore

The Tomb of Washington 190

From an engraving by J. Archer after a drawing by W. H. Bartlett

Monticello 202

From an old woodcut

The Hermitage: Home of Andrew Jackson . .218

From a lithograph by Pendleton, New York, after a drawing by H. Walton

The Balise, Mississippi River 236

From a hand-colored mezzotint engraved by J. Hill after a painting by E. Van Blon

St. Louis and the Mississippi River about 1849 . 240

From a colored lithograph by Arnz & Co. Reproduced by permission of the St. Louis Public Library

Pierre Chouteau House, St. Louis .... 244

From an etching by Pierre Chouteau. Reproduced by permission of the Missouri Historical Society

John Hancock's House, Beacon Hill, Boston . 264

From an engraving by Hill in the Massachusetts Magazine, July, 1789

The Capitol at Washington 280

From an engraving by M. Osborne after a drawing by W. H. Bartlett

The Ascent to the Capitol, Washington . . 288

From an old engraving

PART I " The Marquis "

CHAPTER I A Long Voyage and a Southern Welcome

IT is the year 1777. England makes war on her Colonies, a rebellious group of thirteen States that have dared to defy their King, His Majesty George the Third. Our particular interest, however, is not in England, nor, for the moment, even in the Colonies, but is centered on a group of Frenchmen on board the ship La Victoire that is just sailing, as we open these pages, from the Spanish port of Los Pasajes out into the broad waters of the Atlantic.

It is the month of April, to be specific, the 20th day of April, which in this year falls on Sunday. The party on board consists of some fifteen or sixteen Frenchmen all of whom have been promised commissions in the American army by Silas Deane, agent in Paris for the United States of America. One among the party receives on every hand particular marks of deference, which is the more surprising since he is an unassuming youth of not more than nineteen years. There is nothing in his manner, which is boyish, gracious, and frank, to indicate why he is treated with such marked respect. Any of the crew, however, can tell you that he is the owner of the ship ; any of the French officers can tell you that he is none other than the Marquis de Lafayette, a nobleman of fortune of one of the ancient houses of France who is actually at this very moment running away from Europe in defiance of the commands of his family and his King in order to join the " rebels " in America. Surely a voyage and an enterprise well undertaken in April, the month of All Fools.

Of the Marquis's personal history we get but a word or two from his fellow travelers. He had married three years before the daughter of the Due d'Ayen, of the great family of Noailles, a match that might well satisfy ambition. Moreover, even the court gossips would agree that he tenderly loved his young wife and the little daughter she had borne him ; that he was on the most affectionate terms with her family. And yet the idea of going to fight for the Americans, once having gotten in his head, he had defied the Due d'Ayen and defied the King, and left his wife, who was facing a second maternity, with no more than a written word of farewell.

" Some men don't know when they 're in luck," a sailor muses tritely ; and then, belying his words, he follows the Marquis's figure with eyes of honest admiration. How young he is, how amiable, how full of life : a man who intends to taste life to the lees, come what may,

In the meantime having learned something of the Marquis de Lafayette, let us walk about the ship and make the acquaintance of the other members of the party, some of whom begin to look a little wan as the ship plunges on its way.

There is the Baron de Kalb, a German by birth, but a Frenchman by adoption, a man of military experience, about fifty years of age. This is not his first journey across the sea, and English therefore is not unfamiliar to him. And then there are M. de Gimat, M. de Bedaulx, and M. de la Colombe, all destined to be aides to Lafayette. And there are others, some of whom are never to draw a sword, but are to be ignominiously shipped home again by order of the new government as superfluities of whom America has no need. But no man knows the fate in store for him as he stands on the deck watching the fast-receding shores.

Young Lafayette sees the land fade from sight with a sinking heart. Amidst the difficulties of departure he had had little time to question his course; but now the great waters shut him fast into the small ship-world, leaving him time to question whether he had done right to wound those dearest to him by overriding their wishes. Will his beloved wife ever forgive him for leaving her without one word of farewell? Will his little Henriette turn from him as a stranger when he returns ? Does his wife love him the less ? Will she ever understand ? And then he recalls from what inanities he had fled : dull functions at the court, dull duties at military posts, a "useless journey" to Italy, with no chance of distinguishing himself, offered by his wife's family as an inducement to him to give up the projected trip to America. Surely he was right to follow his deepest convictions and draw his sword as the defender of that liberty which he adored. The shores fade. He turns his eyes bravely in the direction of the unknown.

This was not the era of rapid travel. The ten remaining days of April passed slowly on La Victoire, May's thirty-one passed in equal tedium. Lafayette was no lover of the sea. He called it no fine names, merely found it a " dreary plain." " Nothing but sky, nothing but water, and to-morrow it will be the same." He found the journey wearisome and was certain that he and the seahad a most " doleful influence " upon each other. The winds, like the King and the Due d'Ayen, opposed his progress every league of the way, so that June still found him on the water, though by the end of the first week of that month he saw birds. Despite his natural vivacity the days had been long and dull, filled only with the study of English and his military books. At night the ship was forced to sail without lights and he concluded one of the loveliest of the letters he wrote to his wife by telling her that even in the darkness his fingers were directed by the impulses of his heart and that he had no need of lights to tell her that he loved her and should love her all his life. At the end of fifty-four days the sailing vessel dropped anchor off the coast of South Carolina in North Inlet, near Georgetown. The journey by sea was at an end.

It was afternoon when the ship came to anchor. Impatient of delay, Lafayette and several others of his party including the Baron de Kalb and an American named Price, who had sailed with them, determined to push for land at once in search of a pilot who could guide the ship to Charleston. The ship's yawl was lowered and this advance guard clambered into its cramped space. For five or six hours they rowed up the inlet, but as the tide went down it became impossible to push on in the yawl. Then it was that the party came upon some negroes in an oyster boat, who offered to take one or two of the travelers to shore to the house of their master. It was Mr. Price and De Kalb who followed Lafayette into the rough boat. About midnight these three went ashore and made their way toward a light that streamed from a house in the distance. Young Lafayette was as full of interest and curiosity as Columbus himself once must have been. But the deep bay of watch-dogs greeted them. A voice from the house rang out challengingly :

" Who 's there ? "

It was Baron de Kalb who answered, roaring out their names and purpose. If he had chosen to give Lafayette's full name and title, " Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette," it might indeed have astonished the inmates, but doubtless the good Baron's response was more brief! The door swung wide. Colonel Benjamin Huger bade them all welcome. "A kind, friendly man," Lafayette wrote of him later, and so Huger proved himself to be. He drew them in, himself delighted with the adventure. To-morrow or next day he would take them to Charleston, a city well worth seeing ; they must surely go to Charleston to fit themselves out for the long journey to Philadelphia. We may be sure that he offered them refreshment before sending the colored boys ahead to show the way to rooms.

Lafayette listened attentively to all that was said. He made some phrases himself, with growing confidence. His quick glance took in with delight the Southern home. He marked everywhere the fine, democratic simplicity he had hoped to find. Then with his light step he went up the broad stairs, following the boy's candle. A moment after he was asleep in the first bed he had known for many days, having first noted with delight the strange curtain of protecting mosquito-bar.

It could not have been later than the following morning that Lafayette wrote to his wife :

" I have arrived, my dearest love, in perfect

II health, at the house of an American officer; and by the most fortunate chance in the world a French vessel is on the point of sailing ; conceive how happy I am. I am going this evening to Charleston, when I will write to you. There is no important news. The campaign is opened, but there is no fighting or at least very little. The manners in this part of the country are simple, polite, and worthy in every respect of the country in which the noble name of liberty is constantly repeated. I intended writing to Madame d'Ayen [his mother-in-law], but I find it is impossible. Adieu, adieu, my love. From Charleston I shall repair to Philadelphia to rejoin the army. Is it not true that you will always love me ?"

Lafayette had but a scanty smattering of English at this time, but it is more than likely (that his kind host spoke French as he had been educated in Europe and was of French descent. In any case young Lafayette made friends with the family. We can imagine him taking Colonel Huger's three-year-old son Francis on his knee while he talked to the child of his own litde daughter, Henriette. Whatever he did, the young guest who had come upon them all so unexpectedly at night made an indelible impression on this child^s mind. Years later Francis Huger while a student in Germany made a romantic and daring attempt to rescue Lafayette from an Austrian prison. But these days were all before them. Lafayette with no thought of their shadow fondled the child, smiled at the family, engaged a pilot for his comrades waiting on the ship, and busied himself with his own journey to Charleston. For some reason he and De Kalb did not make the trip there by water with their companions, but borrowed mounts from Colonel Huger and rode away for Charleston with Mr. Price, who had come with them in the oyster boat.

What a fertile, pleasant land it was over which the newcomers journeyed I An early traveler had said of it that it was " a fair and spacious Province," adding, of its forests, that « the whole country consists of Woods, Groves, Marshes and Meadows; it abounds with varieties of as brave Okes as eye can behold " ; and that traveler urged "any industrious and ingenious person who wishes to enjoy the Felicities of this Country to embrace the first opportunity to settle there."

Whether that enthusiast of an earlier day would have called a soldier of fortune " an industrious and ingenious person" we cannot affirm, but certainly the Marquis de Lafayette riding blithely to Charleston gave himself up completely to the « felicities of the Country."

Once there he kept his promise to Adrienne, his wife, and wrote a letter dated June 1 9. After describing his landing in more detail than he had found possible in his first hasty note, he said: "I shall now speak to you, my love, about the country and its inhabitants who are as agreeable as my enthusiasm had led me to imagine. Simplicity of manner, kindness of heart, love of country and of liberty and a delightful state of equality are met with universally. . . . What gives me most pleasure is to see how completely the citizens are all brethren of one family. In America there are none poor and none even that can be called peasants."

In this same letter he wrote of a dinner that was given in his honor in one of the Charleston homes, where he met among a large company Generals Robert Howe and William Moultrie. Here they sat at table some five hours and drank each other's health in fine good humor. Doubtless the old Charleston custom was followed and the dinner was served at four o'clock with the dessert eaten by candle-light. What a pleasant scene to look in upon if we could at will raise the curtain on vanished days : the fine old Charleston house, the groaning board, the numerous colored servants, the candles flickering over all as the shadows gathered under the gallery, showing a company of good patriots who drank the health of the romantic youth who sat among them.

What hearty good wishes must have been Lafayette's when a few days later he left Charleston for the long journey to Philadelphia. How gayly he waved farewell to his new friends as he seated himself beside De Kalb in the light carriage which had been purchased for the trip. Behind him came two other carriages with others of the party, while a negro on horseback brought up the rear. Beside the Marquis galloped a squire, and before him in Hessian uniform rode an outrider, who, ignorant of the country though he was, offered his services as a guide. But, alas, the light carriages were not designed for such roads. At the end of four days they were in splinters and Lafayette took to horseback. Almost nine hundred miles were

i6 to be traversed, but thanks to youth and perfect health, Lafayette minded them not at all. One of his companions wrote of the journey that after sleeping in woods and being almost dead of hunger and of heat, he considered the trip as hard as any European campaign would have been ; but ** young Fayette " could say of that same journey when writing to his wife: "The journey is somewhat fatiguing; but although several of my comrades have suffered a great deal I have scarcely been conscious of fatigue."

This same letter, written when still eight days from Philadelphia, is filled with ardent expressions of Lafayette's desire to reach that city. But the reason he gives for his eagerness to do so is not to enter the American service, not even to make himself acquainted with the great leaders of the Revolution, but the lover's hope of finding a letter awaiting him there !

" I have received no news of you, and my impatience to arrive in Philadelphia to hear from you cannot be compared to any other earthly feeling. Conceive my state of mind after having passed such an immense length of time without having received a line from my love."

From Annapolis he writes again taking no time to learn anything of the town beyond the fact that a ship is to sail soon for France. He arms himself with <« a little weapon dipped in invisible ink" and writes from there: "I hope to receive news of you at Philadelphia and this hope adds to the impatience I feel to arrive in that city. Adieu, my life, I am in such haste that I know not what I write but I do know that I love you more tenderly than ever ; that the pain of this separation was necessary to convince me how very dear you are to me, and that I would give this moment half my existence for the pleasure of embracing you again

i8 and again and telling you with my own lips how well I love you/'

Beautiful and tender words long preserved by a loving heart, published when the woman who had inspired them had long gone to her rest.

And so, mile after mile, Lafayette rides on in the hope of a letter.

Chapter II

A MONTH'S journey after their departure from Charleston brought Lafayette and his companions to Philadelphia. What the sensations of the sophisticated Europeans were upon entering the American city we can only surmise, nor do we know whether private house or tavern sheltered them. Perhaps they went to that inn, undesignated by name, that had been mentioned by John Adams in his diary three years earlier. *« The most genteel tavern in America " he had called it, adding in praise of the supper served him there " that it was as elegant as ever laid upon a table."

The young Marquis, we learn from an account written by one of the officers of the party, arrived in the morning, and, taking time merely to brush off the dust of travel, hastened forth, with his companions, to make himself known. It is a pleasant picture to dwell upon, of Lafayette, his arm drawn through a friend's, walking eagerly through those early streets of Philadelphia on fire to obtain confirmation of the commission given him in Paris by America's representative, Silas Deane, finding time, though, in characteristic fashion, to notice everything that seemed unique or interesting; for there was never, I think, a more wholesome general interest in life than that Lafayette possessed. He had it in youth ; he did not lose it in age.

I think he must have paused in the old market-place, stopped to note Carpenter's Hall, and had time to admire the proportions of the State House, with a thrill for that moment of the year before when the Declaration of Independence had been signed there. It would be worth all the wrath of his French kinsmen, the displeasure of his King, to be claimed as a fellow patriot by Congress.

The party went first to John Hancock, the President of Congress. No welcome was forthcoming from this source. The busy President passed them on to one of the Congressmen. This Congressman received them with no shade of enthusiasm, but took their letters of recommendation and made an appointment for the morrow. Americans official welcome was slow in coming ; Philadelphia showed no such cordiality as Charleston had shown. There was nothing for it but to wait for the morrow.

The wait was doubly hard when Lafayette made certain that not a line of writing awaited him from France. No welcome, no letter, rewarded the long ride through the States. It was not until some time later that he used the following words to his "dear heart," but the thoughts the words convey must have risen bitterly enough to his mind on this first night.

" Imagine how dreadful it is to be far from all I love, in this state of suspense and almost despair; it is impossible to support it, and I feel at the same time that I do not deserve to be pitied. Why was I so obstinately bent on coming thither? I have been well punished for my error; my affections are too strongly rooted for me to be able to perform such deeds."

Such reactions have a way of overwhelming the stoutest of hearts ; but at nineteen hope quickly springs up again. Next morning the group of French officers go to the State House to keep the appointment. Long minutes pass there while nobility, vulgarly speaking, is allowed to cool its heels as democracy takes its time. When at last the member of Congress whom the party had met the day before appears, he presents Mr. James Lovell, member from Massachusetts. "This gentleman speaks French,'* he says. "He is interested with the matters that concern people of your nationality. Hereafter your communications will all be with him." Mr. Lovell talks to them in the street and treats them all «< in excellent French, like a set of adventurers."

"It seems," he says coldly, **that French officers have a great fancy to enter our service uninvited. It is true we were in need of officers last year, but now we have experienced officers and plenty of them " ; and, turning on his heel, he leaves them. Down the street they watch him go. Little does he dream that by refusing to welcome Lafayette he has lost his sole chance for immortality.

And Lafayette stands there with his party in great discomfiture. What is he to do ? Shall he return to France and beg pardon like a whipped boy ? Shall he return to be the j est of the court ? Never ! He had not come to America for small and selfish ends; he had come to serve the cause of Liberty. Liberty would accept him in some role, he felt sure. Again he appeals to Congress. He scribbles a note and persuades a messenger to take it in. "After the sacrifices I have made," he says, «I have the right to exact two favors; one is to serve at my own expense, the other is to serve at first as a volunteer."

This note, modest and generous, scores its point. Congress, weary with the airs and the demands of foreigners, cannot debate this offer. On July 3 i, four days after Lafayette's arrival in Philadelphia, Congress informs him that his services are accepted, and that he is to have the rank and commission of Major-General in the army of the United States.

With the grace and unfailing courtesy that are his by nature and by training, Lafayette writes his acceptance and thanks to Congress, and asks that he may serve near the person of General Washington " till such time as he may see fit to entrust me with a division of the army." Nor does his generous spirit forget to mention the members of his party, of whom

Congress had taken no notice. He adds, in his odd, new English, " it is now as an American that I '11 mention every day to Congress the officers who came over with me, whose interests are for me as my own."

How that generous remembrance of them must have swept away all jealousy of the fortunate Lafayette from the neglected officers. It took more than that mention of them <* every day to Congress," however, to elevate this group in the army. The most Congress ever did for the majority of them was to pay their way back to France ; for except in one or two cases no commissions were forthcoming. De Kalb was one of the most notable of those who found places.

It was shortly after the appointment from Congress that the welcome of America to her would-be lover found a perfect and a fitting voice. At a private party, made up of a few Congressmen and officers, Lafayette marked a

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IZ tall and commanding form. Instantly his heart instructed him that it could be no one else than Washington. "It was impossible to mistake for a moment," wrote Lafayette in reminiscence of that perfect hour, " his majestic figure and deportment ; nor was he less distinguished by his noble affability of manner."

With noble affability, indeed, Washington immediately distinguished the young Frenchman. Signaling him out from the little company, the General complimented the glowing boy for his zeal and his sacrifices and invited him to consider as his own the commander's home.

Mr. Lovell with his cold words was blotted out! What mattered anything now that Washington, the hero of America, had spoken, had understood. How justified instantly was the long sea voyage, the hard travel over the unbroken country — how little every hardship became! Liberty had her spokesman after all, and she had chosen no petty, preoccupied Congressman, but the greatest and best of her sons.

A very short time afterward, Lafayette repaired to the camp where Washington was installed, near Philadelphia, and became " one of the family, '* taking his place on the staff of the commander-in-chief.