Visit of the Marquis de Lafayette to the United States
From July 1824 to September 1825, the French Marquis de Lafayette, the last surviving major general of the American Revolutionary War, made a tour of the 24 states in the United States. He was received by the populace with a hero's welcome at many stops, and many honors and monuments were presented to commemorate and memorialize the visit. Background. Lafayette led troops under the command of George Washington in the American Revolution over 40 years earlier, and he fought in several crucial battles, including the Battle of Brandywine in  Pennsylvania and the Siege of Yorktown in Virginia. He had then returned to France and pursued a political career championing the ideals of liberty that the American republic represented. He helped to write the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen with Thomas Jefferson's assistance, which was inspired by the United States Declaration of Independence. He also advocated the end of slavery, in keeping with the philosophy of natural rights. After the storming of the Bastille in July 1789, he was appointed commander-in-chief of France's National Guard and tried to steer a middle  course through the years of the French Revolution. In August 1792, radical factions of the revolution took control of the government and ordered Lafayette's arrest, so he fled to the Austrian Netherlands. He was captured by Austrian troops and spent more than five years in prison. Lafayette returned to France after Napoleon Bonaparte secured his release in 1797, though he refused to participate in Napoleon's government or his military conquests. After the Bourbon Restoration of 1814, he became a liberal member of the Chamber of Deputies, a position which he held for most of the remainder of his  life. The Bourbon constitutional monarchy had been restored in France for at least ten years, but King Louis XVIII was wheelchair-bound in the spring of 1824 and suffering from severe health issues that proved fatal by late summer. Further, Lafayette was being monitored by the dying king. Lafayette left the French legislature in 1824, and President James Monroe invited him to tour the United States, partly to instill the "spirit of 1776" in the next generation of Americans and partly to celebrate the nation's 50th anniversary. Lafayette visited all of the American states and traveled more than , accompanied  by his son Georges Washington de La Fayette, named after George Washington, and others. He was also accompanied for part of the trip by social reformer Frances Wright. The main means of transportation were stagecoach, horseback, canal barge, and steamboat. Different cities celebrated in different ways. Some held parades or conducted an artillery salute. In some places schoolchildren were brought to welcome the Marquis. Veterans from the war, some of whom were in their sixties and seventies, welcomed the Marquis, and some dined with him. While touring Yorktown, he recognized and embraced James Armistead Lafayette, a free man of color  who adopted his last name to honor the Marquis (he was the first US double agent spy); the story of the event was reported by the "Richmond Enquirer". More than a century later, various towns continued to honor their own "Lafayette Day". Timeline. Lafayette left France on the American merchant vessel "Cadmus" on July 13, 1824, and his tour began on August 15, 1824, when he arrived at Staten Island, New York. He toured the northern and eastern states in the fall of 1824, including stops at Monticello to visit Thomas Jefferson and Washington, D.C., where he was received at  the White House by President James Monroe. He began his tour of the Southern United States in March 1825, arriving at the Fort Mitchell, Alabama crossing of the Chattahoochee River on March 31. Honors received during the trip. Fayetteville, North Carolina was named after Lafayette. The College of William and Mary conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws on October 20, 1824. Late in the trip, he again received honorary citizenship of Maryland. Congress voted him $200,000 and a township of land in Tallahassee, Florida, known as the Lafayette Land Grant. 1824: Visit to Monticello. Lafayette  arrived at Monticello on November 4 in a carriage provided by Jefferson with a military escort of 120 men. Jefferson waited outside on the front portico. By this time some 200 friends and neighbors had also arrived for the event. Lafayette's carriage pulled up to the front lawn where a bugle sounded the arrival of the procession with its revolutionary banners waving. Lafayette was advanced in age and slowly stepped down from the carriage. Jefferson was 81 and in ill health, and he slowly descended the front steps and began making his way towards his old friend. His grandson  Randolph was present and witnessed the historic reunion: "As they approached each other, their uncertain gait quickened itself into a shuffling run, and exclaiming, 'Ah Jefferson!' 'Ah Lafayette!', they burst into tears as they fell into each other's arms." Everyone in attendance stood in respectful silence, many of them stifling sobs of their own. Jefferson and Lafayette then retired to the privacy of the house and began reminiscing over the many events and encounters which they shared years before. The next morning, Jefferson, Lafayette, and James Madison rode to the Central Hotel in Charlottesville in Jefferson's landau. They  were escorted by mounted troops and followed by the local townspeople and other friends. They were greeted and honored with speeches, then departed the hotel at noon and set out for a banquet at the University of Virginia which Jefferson was anxious for Lafayette to see; he had postponed the commencement of classes for the event. After a three-hour dinner, Jefferson had someone read a speech that he had prepared for Lafayette, as his voice was weak and could not carry very far. This proved to be Jefferson's last public speech. Lafayette later accepted Jefferson's invitation for  honorary membership to the University's Jefferson Literary and Debating Society. Lafayette bid Jefferson goodbye after an 11-day visit. 1825: Return to France. Lafayette had expressed his intention of sailing for home sometime in the late summer or early autumn of 1825. President John Quincy Adams decided to have an American warship carry him back to Europe, and he chose a recently built 44-gun frigate named "Susquehanna" for this honor. However, it was renamed "Brandywine" to commemorate the battle in which the Frenchman had shed his blood for American freedom and as a gesture of the nation's  affection for Lafayette. "Brandywine" was launched on June 16, 1825, and christened by Sailing Master Marmaduke Dove; she was commissioned on August 25, 1825, with Captain Charles Morris in command. Lafayette enjoyed a last state dinner to celebrate his 68th birthday on the evening of September 6, and then embarked in the steamboat "Mount Vernon" on the 7th for the trip downriver to join "Brandywine". On the 8th, the frigate stood out of the Potomac River and sailed down Chesapeake Bay toward the open ocean. As he sat on the "Brandywine" ready to depart, General Isaac Fletcher conveyed greetings from  Revolutionary War compatriot General William Barton, and also explained that Barton had been in debtors' prison in Danville, Vermont, for 14 years. Lafayette promptly paid Barton's fine and thus allowed him to return to his family in Rhode Island. After a stormy three weeks at sea, the warship arrived off Le Havre, France, early in October, and, following some initial trepidation about the government's attitude toward Lafayette's return to a France now ruled by King Charles X, "Brandywine's" honored passenger returned home.