The waving of a 24-star flag, red-white-blue bunting, banners, and fireworks throughout the country to celebrate Revolutionary War hero General Lafayette during his up-close and in-person visit in 1824-25 contrasts sharply with the anxiety and unease many Americans today feel when they see Old Glory flying.[1] For me personally, I get the chills when I hear the portion of the National Emblem March used for the “Presentation of Colors.”[2] And I got the chills at the July 4, 1976, bicentennial attending the Sunset Parade of Marines on the parade ground of the Iwo Jima Memorial with my father, an Iwo Jima veteran.[3] Furthermore, I have been a member of the Knights of Columbus for almost 30 years. All the good works the Knights do are informed by four core principles: charity, unity, fraternity, and, notably for this essay, patriotism. The Knights you see bedecked in their ceremonial regalia are those who, like me, have been initiated into the principle of patriotism and are “fourth degree” Knights. As a fourth degree Knight, I belong to the Commodore John Barry Assembly. Barry was an Irish Catholic who served during the Revolutionary War.

Two hundred years ago, on February 7, 1824, President James Monroe invited Revolutionary War hero General Lafayette to the United States. A copy of the letter and its transcription are here. Earlier, Lafayette, age 67, had expressed his wish to visit this country for the first time since he had left it in 1785 at age 28. A joint congressional resolution was introduced January 12 and passed both houses on January 29. The fact that 1824 was a presidential election year did not deter Monroe, whose term would end in a year, or Congress from making the invitation in anticipation of the Republic’s 50^th anniversary of independence.

Turning to that election for a moment: The presidential contenders were four: John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, and William Crawford. This was the election famous for being thrown into the House.[4] Lafayette dined on January 12, 1825, with, among others, Adams, Jackson, van Buren, Clay, and Calhoun.[5] He attended the House vote on February 9, 1825.[6] It had been a hard-fought contest. That evening, Lafayette and Auguste Levasseur, his personal secretary, attended a White House dinner. In his memoirs, Levasseur recounted the encounter of Jackson and president-elect John Quincy Adams. “The congratulations offered by General Jackson were open and sincere; Mr. Adams seemed deeply moved…”[7] Levasseur and Lafayette were impressed with the patriotic unity.

In the course of my research, I have found no evidence that any candidate for any office, local, state, or federal, in 1824 tried to exploit Lafayette’s visit for political advantage. Of course, everyone wanted the limelight of delivering a speech of welcome and offering one of the many toasts.

After some delay and a month’s voyage, the man everyone had started to call “the Nation’s Guest”[8] arrived on our shores on August 15, 1824, intending to stay for four months. He later extended his stay. From August 15, 1824, until he departed on September 7, 1825, he was feted each and every day of the thirteen months. This was a singular event in American history. This was bigger than Lincoln’s funeral train. Every day was a Fourth of July. Lafayette was escorted from town to town by prominent townspeople. Carriages were built for the occasion. (Here is one held by the Studebaker Museum in South Bend, Indiana.) He was lauded by speeches, poems, banquets, parades, and artillery salutes. People wore gloves and scarves bearing his image. (Here are 800 objects held by Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania.) Governors and mayors greeted him. Elderly Revolutionary War veterans greeted him. The generation which fought the Revolutionary War was fast expiring. Indeed, Lafayette was the last surviving general officer.

During and after his visit, places and streets were named or renamed in his honor — places like Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., and Lafayette, Indiana. (Some places, like Fayetteville (1783), North Carolina, had been named in his honor before 1824-25.) Papers throughout the country reported on all his doings and movements. In addition, papers reported on his life, especially his service during the Revolutionary War, and they published anecdotes of veterans. Readers were aghast to learn of his imprisonment 1792-1797 by French revolutionaries at which time he lost his hair.

It is amazing to read the reports of 200 years ago, of how the people embraced Lafayette, and to realize that he was, and was known to be, a devout Catholic his entire life. During the Revolution, there were only 20,000 to 40,000 Catholics in a population of some 2.5 million. So, only 1-2% of the population was Catholic. And Catholics were generally despised (except in Maryland). Lafayette, however, was treated like a son by George Washington, and he was equally embraced by Washington’s aide, Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s generals like Nathaniel Greene, Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson, and the men who served under Lafayette.

Patriotism, unity, and devotion to the U.S. Constitution are important to Catholics in America. As we are well aware, acutely aware, the United States of 2024 is extremely partisan and divisive and everything is politics, politics, politics. (While some think this is a new situation, it was partisan and divisive in the past as well, including 1824, the particular year studied in this essay, and of course 1860.) From our country’s founding, patriotism has been the hallmark of the Catholic Church in America, at the national, diocesan, and parish levels, and among so many Catholic organizations, like the Knights of Columbus, like Boy Scout troops, like our parochial schools that begin each day with the Pledge of Allegiance. In the face of attacks on the Church by nativists and the old KKK, all Catholic organizations have striven to demonstrate their patriotism, their love of this country and its Constitution. Today, there are increasing numbers of our fellow citizens who find Catholic teaching hateful and contrary to “American values”; they style Catholics as unAmerican. There have been constant attacks on Church teaching about abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and transgenderism. Recently, Michigan’s Governor Whitmer mocked the faith by giving fake “communion” to a sycophant. Despite this, we Catholics are patriots, like Lafayette was a patriot.

The rest of this seven-part essay provides an overview of Lafayette’s entire trip, with a special emphasis on his extended stay with Jefferson.

[A link to Part 2 is here.]

[1] See, for example, Larry F. Slonaker, “Reclaiming the Flag: Patriotism Belongs to No Party,” The Hill, June 30, 2024; Luke Gentile, “Marquette Professor Says American Flag Is Source of Fear and Anxiety,” Washington Examiner, June 20, 2023 (“A professor at Marquette University said he feels “anxious” whenever he sees the American flag. ‘I also get a little bit anxious around the excessive imagery of the flag in part because in my experience, patriotism quickly slips into nationalism,’ associate professor of philosophy at Marquette Dr. Grant Silva said in an interview published on Flag Day.”); Brian Mann and Piper McDaniel, “We Asked Americans How They Feel About the U.S. Flag; It Got Interesting,” All Things Considered/National Public Radio, orig. Oct. 12, 2020, updated June 14, 2023.

[2] In this video, starting at 1:49: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEL7T-qd7u0

[3] Ivan D. Thunder, The Pacific War and Battle of Iwo Jima: Recollections & Essays by a Seabee Lieutenant (2012).

[4] Edward G. Lengel, “Adams v. Jackson: The Election of 1824,” Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

[5] Charles Francis Adams, ed., John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848, vol. 6 (1875), p. 466.

[6] J. Bennett Nolan, Lafayette in America: Day by Day (1934), p. 273 (covers his time in America during the Revolution as well as 1824-25).

[7] Levasseur, vol. 2, p. 25.

[8] The term “guest of the nation” first appeared in papers anywhere in the country, by my research, in “Corporation Proceedings,” Alexandria [Va.] Gazette, June 26, 1824, p. 3, and “Nation’s Guest” first appeared in Richmond Enquirer, July 27, 1824, p. 3, col. 1.