During the long, dark night of Lafayette's imprisonment he had
dreamed of America as the land of dawn and hope, and planned to make
a new home there, but when release came this had not seemed best.
Madame Lafayette's health had been too frail, and La Grange, with its
neglected acres, was too obviously awaiting a master. "Besides, we
lack the first dollar to buy a farm. That, in addition to many other
considerations, should prevent your tormenting yourself about it," he
told Adrienne. One of these considerations was the beloved old aunt
at Chavaniac, who lived to the age of ninety-two and never ceased to
be the object of his special care. Also his young people, with their
marriages and budding families, were too dear to permit him willingly
to put three thousand miles of ocean between them and himself.
But he had never lost touch with his adopted country. At the time he
declined Napoleon's offer to make him minister to the United States
he wrote a correspondent that he had by no means given up the hope of
visiting it again as a private citizen; though, he added, humorously,
[Pg 259]he fancied that if he landed in America in anything except a
military uniform he would feel as embarrassed and as much out of place
as a savage in knee-breeches. After Napoleon sold Louisiana to the
United States, foreseeing he could not profitably keep it, Jefferson
sounded Lafayette about coming to be governor of the newly acquired
territory. That offer, too, he had seen fit to refuse; but his friends
called him "the American enthusiast."
Time went by until almost fifty years had passed since the "Bostonians"
took their stand against the British king. To celebrate the
semi-centennial, America decided to raise a monument to the heroes
of Bunker Hill. Lafayette was asked to lay the corner-stone at the
ceremonies which were to take place on the fiftieth anniversary of the
battle. It became the pleasant duty of President James Monroe, who
had served as a subaltern in the battle where Lafayette received his
American wound, to send him the official invitation of Congress and
to place a government frigate at his disposal for the trip. A turn of
French elections in 1824 had left him temporarily "a statesman out of a
job," without even the duty of representing his district in the Chamber
of Deputies. There was really no reason why he should not accept and
every reason why he might at last gratify his desire to see America and
American friends again.
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