VISIT OF LAFAYETTE TO THE UNITED STATES.
In the summer of this year General Lafayette, accompanied by his
son, Mr. George Washington Lafayette, and under an invitation
from the President, revisited the United States after a lapse
of forty years. He was received with unbounded honor, affection,
and gratitude by the American people. To the survivors of the
Revolution, it was the return of a brother; to the new generation,
born since that time, it was the apparition of an historical
character, familiar from the cradle; and combining all the titles to
love, admiration, gratitude, enthusiasm, which could act upon the
heart and the imagination of the young and the ardent. He visited
every State in the Union, doubled in number since, as the friend
and pupil of Washington, he had spilt his blood, and lavished his
fortune, for their independence. His progress through the States was
a triumphal procession, such as no Roman ever led up--a procession
not through a city, but over a continent--followed, not by captives
in chains of iron, but by a nation in the bonds of affection. To
him it was an unexpected and overpowering reception. His modest
estimate of himself had not allowed him to suppose that he was to
electrify a continent. He expected kindness, but not enthusiasm.
He expected to meet with surviving friends--not to rouse a young
generation. As he approached the harbor of New-York, he made inquiry
of some acquaintance to know whether he could find a hack to convey
him to a hotel? Illustrious man, and modest as illustrious! Little
did he know that all America was on foot to receive him--to take
possession of him the moment he touched her soil--to fetch and
to carry him--to feast and applaud him--to make him the guest of
cities, States, and the nation, as long as he could he detained.
Many were the happy meetings which he had with old comrades,
survivors for near half a century of their early hardships and
dangers; and most grateful to his heart it was to see them, so many
of them, exceptions to the maxim which denies to the beginners of
revolutions the good fortune to conclude them (and of which maxim
his own country had just been so sad an exemplification), and to
see his old comrades not only conclude the one they began, but live
to enjoy its fruits and honors. Three of his old associates he
found ex-presidents (Adams, Jefferson, and Madison), enjoying the
respect and affection of their country, after having reached its
highest honors. Another, and the last one that _Time_ would admit
to the Presidency (Mr. Monroe), now in the Presidential chair, and
inviting him to revisit the land of his adoption. Many of his
early associates seen in the two Houses of Congress--many in the
State governments, and many more in all the walks of private life,
patriarchal sires, respected for their characters, and venerated for
their patriotic services. It was a grateful spectacle, and the more
impressive from the calamitous fate which he had seen attend so many
of the revolutionary patriots of the Old World. But the enthusiasm
of the young generation astonished and excited him, and gave him a
new view of himself--a future glimpse of himself--and such as he
would be seen in after ages. Before _them_, he was in the presence
of posterity; and in their applause and admiration he saw his own
future place in history, passing down to the latest time as one of
the most perfect and beautiful characters which one of the most
eventful periods of the world had produced. Mr. Clay, as Speaker of
the House of Representatives, and the organ of their congratulations
to Lafayette (when he was received in the hall of the House),
very felicitously seized the idea of his present confrontation
with posterity, and adorned and amplified it with the graces of
oratory. He said: "The vain wish has been sometimes indulged, that
Providence would allow the patriot, after death, to return to his
country, and to contemplate the intermediate changes which had taken
place--to view the forests felled, the cities built, the mountains
levelled, the canals cut, the highways opened, the progress of the
arts, the advancement of learning, and the increase of population.
General! your present visit to the United States is the realization
of the consoling object of that wish, hitherto vain. You are in
the midst of posterity! Every where you must have been struck with
the great changes, physical and moral, which have occurred since
you left us. Even this very city, bearing a venerated name, alike
endearing to you and to us, has since emerged from the forest which
then covered its site. In one respect you behold us unaltered, and
that is, in the sentiment of continued devotion to liberty, and of
ardent affection and profound gratitude to your departed friend,
the father of his country, and to your illustrious associates in
the field and in the cabinet, for the multiplied blessings which
surround us, and for the very privilege of addressing you, which I
now have." He was received in both Houses of Congress with equal
honor; but the Houses did not limit themselves to honors: they
added substantial rewards for long past services and sacrifices--two
hundred thousand dollars in money, and twenty-four thousand acres
of fertile land in Florida. These noble grants did not pass without
objection--objection to the principle, not to the amount. The
ingratitude of republics is the theme of any declaimer: it required
a _Tacitus_ to say, that gratitude was the death of republics, and
the birth of monarchies; and it belongs to the people of the United
States to exhibit an exception to that profound remark (as they do
to so many other lessons of history), and show a young republic that
knows how to be grateful without being unwise, and is able to pay
the debt of gratitude without giving its liberties in the discharge
of the obligation. The venerable Mr. Macon, yielding to no one in
love and admiration of Lafayette, and appreciation of his services
and sacrifices in the American cause, opposed the grants in the
Senate, and did it with the honesty of purpose and the simplicity
of language which distinguished all the acts of his life. He said:
"It was with painful reluctance that he felt himself obliged to
oppose his voice to the passage of this bill. He admitted, to the
full extent claimed for them, the great and meritorious services of
General Lafayette, and he did not object to the precise sum which
this bill proposed to award him; but he objected to the bill on
this ground: he considered General Lafayette, to all intents and
purposes, as having been, during our revolution, a son adopted into
the family, taken into the household, and placed, in every respect,
on the same footing with the other sons of the same family. To treat
him as others were treated, was all, in this view of his relation
to us, that could be required, and this had been done. That General
Lafayette made great sacrifices, and spent much of his money in the
service of this country (said Mr. M.), I as firmly believe as I do
any other thing under the sun. I have no doubt that every faculty of
his mind and body were exerted in the Revolutionary war, in defence
of this country; but this was equally the case with all the sons
of the family. Many native Americans spent their all, made great
sacrifices, and devoted their lives in the same cause. This was the
ground of his objection to this bill, which, he repeated, it was
as disagreeable to him to state as it could be to the Senate to
hear. He did not mean to take up the time of the Senate in debate
upon the principle of the bill, or to move any amendment to it. He
admitted that, when such things were done, they should be done with
a free hand. It was to the principle of the bill, therefore, and not
to the sum proposed to be given by it, that he objected."
The ardent Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina, reporter of the bill
in the Senate, replied to the objections, and first showed from
history (not from Lafayette, who would have nothing to do with
the proposed grant), his advances, losses, and sacrifices in our
cause. He had expended for the American service, in six years, from
1777 to 1783, the sum of 700,000 francs ($140,000), and under what
circumstances?--a foreigner, owing us nothing, and throwing his
fortune into the scale with his life, to be lavished in our cause.
He left the enjoyments of rank and fortune, and the endearments of
his family, to come and serve in our almost destitute armies, and
without pay. He equipped and armed a regiment for our service, and
freighted a vessel to us, loaded with arms and munitions. It was not
until the year 1794, when almost ruined by the French revolution,
and by his efforts in the cause of liberty, that he would receive
the naked pay, without interest, of a general officer for the
time he had served with us. He was entitled to land as one of the
officers of the Revolution, and 11,500 acres was granted to him,
to be located on any of the public lands of the United States. His
agent located 1000 acres adjoining the city of New Orleans; and
Congress afterwards, not being informed of the location, granted the
same ground to the city of New Orleans. His location was valid, and
he was so informed; but he refused to adhere to it, saying that he
would have no contest with any portion of the American people, and
ordered the location to be removed; which was done, and carried upon
ground of little value--thus giving up what was then worth $50,000,
and now $500,000. These were his moneyed advances, losses, and
sacrifices, great in themselves, and of great value to our cause,
but perhaps exceeded by the moral effect of his example in joining
us, and his influence with the king and ministry, which procured us
the alliance of France.
The grants were voted with great unanimity, and with the general
concurrence of the American people. Mr. Jefferson was warmly for
them, giving as a reason, in a conversation with me while the
grants were depending (for the bill was passed in the Christmas
holidays, when I had gone to Virginia, and took the opportunity
to call upon that great man), which showed his regard for liberty
abroad as well as at home, and his far-seeing sagacity into future
events. He said there would be a change in France and Lafayette
would be at the head of it, and ought to be easy and independent
in his circumstances, to be able to act efficiently in conducting
the movement. This he said to me on Christmas day, 1824. Six
years afterwards this view into futurity was verified. The old
Bourbons had to retire: the Duke of Orleans, a brave general in
the republican armies, at the commencement of the Revolution, was
handed to the throne by Lafayette, and became the "citizen king,
surrounded by republican institutions." And in this Lafayette was
consistent and sincere. He was a republican himself, but deemed
a constitutional monarchy the proper government for France, and
labored for that form in the person of Louis XVI. as well as in that
of Louis Philippe.
Loaded with honors, and with every feeling of his heart gratified
in the noble reception he had met in the country of his adoption,
Lafayette returned to the country of his birth the following summer,
still as the guest of the United States, and under its flag.
He was carried back in a national ship of war, the new frigate
Brandywine--a delicate compliment (in the name and selection of the
ship) from the new President, Mr. Adams, Lafayette having wet with
his blood the sanguinary battle-field which takes its name from the
little stream which gave it first to the field, and then to the
frigate. Mr. Monroe, then a subaltern in the service of the United
States, was wounded at the same time. How honorable to themselves
and to the American people, that nearly fifty years afterwards,
they should again appear together, and in exalted station; one as
President, inviting the other to the great republic, and signing the
acts which testified a nation's gratitude; the other as a patriot
hero, tried in the revolutions of two countries, and resplendent in
the glory of virtuous and consistent fame.