General Lafayette made a second visit to Jefferson at Monticello. He arrived from Fredericksburg on August 15, 1825. On August 20 he visited Charlottesville and was feted again at the University which had opened the previous March. He left the next day for Montpelier.[1] Lafayette was accompanied by Monroe and Madison on this visit to Jefferson.[2] Attorney General William Wirt was also a guest at the dinner.[3]

For at least one of the dinners at Monticello, either in November or August, Levasseur does not state which, two Indian chiefs were present. Levasseur writes the following regarding a visit these same chiefs made to Lafayette in Washington, D.C., on November 24:[4]

Indian delegations had [] arrived from the most distant forests, to make known the wants of their brethren to the American government. These deputations came to visit General Lafayette…they were introduced by Major Pitchlynn, their interpreter; at their head were two chiefs whom we had previously seen at Mr. Jefferson’s table during our visit to Monticello. I recognized them by their ears cut into long straps and garnished with long plates of lead. One of them, named Mushulatatubbee[5] made an address to General Lafayette in the Indian language; after he had concluded Pushalamata[6] the first of their chiefs, also addressed the general, congratulating him on his return to the land for which he had fought and bled in his youth…[7]

Leaving behind the extended visit of Lafayette with Jefferson, we turn to the rest of his tour. What follows is a summary:

December 1824: Washington, D.C. (Navy Yard; first commencement of Columbian College, now George Washington University, addresses a joint session of Congress;[8] Annapolis, Maryland, before the Naval Academy was founded in 1845, Maryland State House, Frederick)

1825:

January: Baltimore, Richmond, Harrisburg. Ary Scheffer painted a portrait of Lafayette in 1819. He made two replicas in 1822/23, sending one to the Speaker of the House in 1824, where it has hung continuously since January 20, 1825.[9] C.W. Peale’s painting of Washington and Lafayette at the surrender of Yorktown was unveiled in the Capitol.[10]

February: southern Virginia, North Carolina

March: North Carolina (Raleigh, Fayetteville, Charleston); Georgia (Savannah, laid cornerstone to monument to General Nathaniel Greene), Augusta, capital Milledgeville, Macon); Alabama

April: Alabama (Montgomery, Selma, capital Cahaba, Mobile); Louisiana (New Orleans; site of 1815 Battle; lodges in The Cabildo, site of the Louisiana Purchase transfer ceremonies of 1803, Baton Rouge); Mississippi (Natchez); Missouri (St. Louis); Illinois (Kaskaskia, former capital of Upper Louisiana)

May: Tennessee (Nashville); steamboat sinks on Ohio River without loss of life; Indiana (Jeffersonville); Kentucky (Louisville, Frankfort, Lexington, Georgetown, Maysville; visited Henry Clay in his home); Ohio (Cincinnati, Gallipolis, Marietta); Virginia (Wheeling); Pennsylvania (Washington, Uniontown, Brownsville, Braddock, Pittsburgh). Matthew Jouett was commissioned by the Kentucky legislature to paint a portrait. Lafayette sat for it in Lexington, May 17, 1825.

June: Pennsylvania (Butler, Erie); New York (Buffalo, traveling on unfinished Erie Canal, Niagara Falls, Rochester, Syracuse, Schenectady, Albany); Massachusetts (Pittsfield, laid cornerstone on 50^th anniversary for Bunker Hill Monument, Boston, Daniel Webster orator); New Hampshire (Dover); Maine (South Berwick, Saco, Biddeford, Scarborough, Portland, Concord, Hopkinton, Claremont); Vermont (Royalton, Montpelier, Burlington)

July: New York (West Point); New Jersey (Morristown, Princeton, Trenton); Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Germantown, Chestnut Hill, Chester, Battle of Brandywine, Lancaster); Maryland (Baltimore)

August: Virginia (Mount Vernon, Fairfax, Leesburg, Charlottesville, Orange, Culpeper)

September: Mount Vernon; farewell dinner with President John Quincy Adams; delivers farewell speech[11]

Some of the things that happened after Lafayette’s departure on September 7, 1825, included:

• In 1826, Samuel Morse, the portraitist who later invented the telegraph, completed his portrait of Lafayette.[12]
• As mentioned, Levasseur published his two-volume memoirs of the tour starting in French in 1828 and in English in 1829.
• A. Parker wrote his 150-page 1879 Recollections of General Lafayette on His Visit.
• A statue of Lafayette was erected in 1891 in Lafayette Square, Washington, D.C. There is a long list of statues, roads, places, schools, etc.[13]
• The American flag has flown over Lafayette’s grave since Pershing visited it in 1917.[14]
• The frontispiece to a 1919 book With Lafayette in America by Octavia Roberts quotes the Illinois Intelligencer of June 10, 1825: “When Lafayette is forgotten our enthusiasm for the cause of liberty will have departed and the hour of our slavery will have arrived.”
• As mentioned, Edgar E. Brandon compiled his three-volume Lafayette, Guest of the Nation: A Contemporary Account of the “Triumphal Tour” of General Lafayette Through the United States in 1824-1825 (1950-1957) (with a fourth, unpublished volume held by Miami University, Oxford, Ohio)
• Idzerda, Loveland and Miller wrote their Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds: The Art and Pageantry of His Farewell Tour of America, 1824-1825: Essays (1989).
• In 2002, the U.S. Congress conferred posthumous U.S. citizenship on him. See House Committee Report 107-595.
• Elizabeth Reese (chair, American Friends of Lafayette Bicentennial Committee for Washington, D.C.) wrote Marquis de Lafayette Returns: A Tour of America’s National Capital Region (2024).

In addition, there are these full-length biographies of Lafayette (which do not include ones focused on the Revolutionary War), in chronological order:

Andreas Latzko, Lafayette: A Life (1936)
Marian Klamkin, Return of Lafayette (1975)
Peter Buckman, Lafayette: A Biography (1977)
Olivier Bernier, Lafayette: Hero of Two Worlds (1983)
Stanley Idzerda, Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds (1989)
Harlow Giles Unger, Lafayette (2003)
Laura Auricchio, The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered (2015)
Donald Miller, Lafayette: His Extraordinary Life and Legacy (2015)
Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds (2022)

On the 100^th anniversary of Lafayette’s death on May 20, 1934, Secretary of State Cordell Hull said Lafayette’s farewell tour “inspired an enthusiasm becoming the people who had resolved to be free.”[15] We laud Lafayette for putting his life at risk for liberty both in America and in France, for being the principal author of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, for his fight for religious toleration, for spending his money to help free slaves in French colonies. And we Catholics laud him for all this and for his faith.

Has there been any patriotic event in American history of similar magnitude — in the number of towns and cities and duration — that has “inspired an enthusiasm becoming the people who had resolved to be free”? Perhaps the 1976 Bicentennial celebrated from April 1, 1975, to July 4, 1976. Perhaps, as I mentioned at the start, the funeral train for Lincoln for three weeks through seven states in 1865. (Would that there had been such a train in 2004 for President Reagan from Washington to California.) Although the following events were large, I don’t think they’re in the same league: the Union’s “Grand Review” of two days in May 1865; Pershing’s victory parades in New York and Washington; V-E and V-J Days which, while experienced in many countries by millions of people, were short-lived; ticker tape parades for John Glenn in 1962 and 1998; a ticker tape parade for Neil Armstrong/Apollo 11 in 1969; celebrations of national championships for collegiate or professional sports teams.

Lafayette’s tour was less a reflection on him and his role in the Revolution than a reflection of the American people, the American spirit, and American ideals — in short, on American patriotism. Lafayette, Jefferson, John Adams, Monroe, Madison, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and Henry Clay, and the ten million citizens in 1825 would all agree. And today, in 2024, let us recall the words of the Illinois Intelligencer of June 10, 1825, when Lafayette was visiting the unfinished Erie Canal and its environs: “When Lafayette is forgotten our enthusiasm for the cause of liberty will have departed and the hour of our slavery will have arrived.”

[A link to Part 6 is here.]

[1] Nolan, pp. 302-03.

[2] Levasseur, vol. 2, pp. 245-6.

[3] John P. Kennedy, Memoirs of the Life of William Wirt, Vol. 2, p. 177 (quoting his letter to his wife on Aug. 20, 1825, stating he had dined with Lafayette at the University that day); “Gen. La Fayette,” Richmond Enquirer, Sept. 6, 1825, p. 1, col. 4.

[4] Nolan, p. 260.

[5] Various spellings. A Choctaw.

[6] Various spellings. A Choctaw. He died the following month, as Levasseur states.

[7] Levasseur, Vol. 2, pp. 10-11.

[8] Lafayette addressed the Senate on Dec. 9. On Dec. 10, the House invited the entire Senate to its chamber to hear Lafayette. The full text of Speaker Henry Clay’s address and Lafayette’s reply are recorded. Register of Debates, 18^th Cong., Vol. 1, Dec 9-10, 1824, pp. 3-5.

[9] Nolan, p. 269.

[10] Nolan, p. 268.

[11] Sept. 7, 1825. Levasseur provides full text of President Adams’s speech and Lafayette’s reply. Vol. 2, pp. 248-254. This is sometimes erroneously described as an address to a joint session of Congress.

[12] The subject of Ryan L. Cole, “Portrait of an Elder Hero,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 16-17, 2023, p. C14.

[13] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honors_and_memorials_to_the_Marquis_de_Lafayette#cite_note-9

[14] Library of Congress, image of Pershing at tomb, 1917.

[15] Eugene Scheel, “Marquis Captured a Nation’s Heart,” Washington Post, Aug. 20, 2000.