page_title: Lafayette Welcoming Parade of 1824 (New York City)
section_title: Parade
hierarchical_section_title: Lafayette Welcoming Parade of 1824 (New York City) / Parade
caption_attribution_description: English: Landing of Gen. Lafayette at Castle Garden, New York, 16th August 1824
context_page_description: The Lafayette Welcoming Parade of 1824 was a parade held in New York City on August 16, 1824, to welcome the arrival of the Marquis de Lafayette on the occasion of his visit to the United States for a sixteen-month tour. It has been described as the first triumphal parade in New York history.
context_section_description: Lafayette and his entourage landed at Castle Clinton where an enormous military escort had been assembled to usher him along Broadway and to the New York City Hall, where he was to be greeted by Mayor Stephen Allen, a route lined by upwards of 50,000 people (about one-third of the city's population at the time). The marquis' secretary, Auguste Levasseur, described the landing ceremony and parade in a journal he kept of the tour: 
  The general, attended by a numerous and brilliant staff, marched along the front; as he advanced, each corps presented arms and saluted him with its colours; all were decorated with a riband bearing his portrait. During this review, the cannon thundered from the shore, in the forts, and from all the vessels of war.
  At the extremity of the line of troops, elegant carriages were in waiting. General Lafayette was seated in a car drawn by four white horses, and in the midst of an immense crowd, we went to the City Hall. On our way, all the streets were decorated with flags and drapery, and from all the windows flowers and wreathes were showered upon the general.
  The driver of Lafayette's coach became a minor, temporary celebrity among the onlookers as he waited for the marquis; when one of his horses became perturbed by the growing throng, contemporary accounts report the man calmed him with the words "behave pretty now, Charley – you are going to carry the greatest man in the world". The New York Mirror, meanwhile, wrote of New Yorkers response to the entrance of Lafayette into the city:
  Gentlemen are ready to throw by their business to shake him by the hand, and ladies forget their lovers to dream of him. If a man asks 'have you seen him?' you know who he means.
caption: Lafayette's barge travels from Staten Island to Castle Clinton.
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