Transcript of a talk given by Bill Jeffway, Executive Director of the Dutchess County Historical Society on the Bicentennial of Revolutionary War Major General Lafayette’s local vist. September 16, 2024, FDR Presidential Library & Museum, Hyde Park, New York
a bureau.
Bill Jeffway
Thank you for coming to celebrate this amazing bicentennial today. September 16th, 2024 is the 200th anniversary of American Revolutionary War Major General Lafayette's local visit. There is a little depiction of the route that he took in the bottom left of the screen. He landed at the foot of Main Street at seven o'clock in the morning on September 16th, having only had a couple of hours sleep, getting in from prior visits at Newburgh and West Point. After three hours in Poughkeepsie he went on to other sites, which I'll go over.
We are very grateful to a number of people for making this happen. The American Friends of Lafayette is the group that got me interested a couple of years ago in coming to understand more about Lafayette. What I'm sharing with you today are the things that I've discovered. I knew very little about him, except the highest level stories that most people know. The American Friends of Lafayette is helping people across the country, and the world, understand Lafayette's values and why he has come to be such an enduring icon. I want to also thank Dutchess County Tourism. This is part of our official launch of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, which I think is a great chance to look at the achievements of the American people since 1776. We are close partners with Dutchess Tourism to help ensure as many people as possible, whether they live locally or are visiting, come to understand the extraordinary history of our unique county. And I want to particularly thank the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum for making this site available to us. The Library & Museum recently received our Dutchess Community Award, because they go out of their way to make the site available for local events like this. And you'll see up here, a little, a badge will allow you free admission into the Civil Rights exhibition, which is a very powerful and significant and available to view today if you take one of these little stickers. But before I get into my talk, I want to ask Chuck Schwam, the Executive Director of American Friends of Lafayette, to speak a bit about that organization and how this day fits in the larger work that they're doing. Thank you.
Chuck Schwam
Thank you, Bill. It's nice to see that Bill has legs because for the last two years I've seen him on my little screen. We have been working on this for two years, and today is Bill's vision. And we signed off on it, and I'm very honored and thrilled to be associated with what Bill is doing. Thank you so much. My name is Chuck Schwam. I'm the Executive Director of the American Friends of Lafayette, and I'm also the National Bicentennial Chair. And my partner in crime is here today: that's Patti Maclay. She's the vice chair. Patty also holds a title with the DAR that I'm going to try to recite here: National Chair Franco- American Memorial Committee, Daughters of the American Revolution. Thank you, Patti.
We are following Lafayette's footsteps around the country. And as you can see, the American Friends of Lafayette was born in 1932 at Lafayette College. And we currently have 1500 members. And we're growing like, it's unbelievable. Several members a day we're growing by, and, and what's happening is, the reason we're growing is because Lafayette has come back and we're celebrating that event. Lafayette came back in 1824 on August 16th, and on August 16th, we celebrated that in New York City. And our chair of that committee is also here today. And that's Susan Minker. Thank you for being here, Susan.
And that started everything. And now 13 months of craziness, because my hair used to be black, but yeah, he was here for 13 months. He was only supposed to stay for three, but everybody wanted a piece of Lafayette. When he showed up in New York on August 16th, 1824, 90,000 people showed up. Only 110,000 people lived in New York at the time. So if the Beatles think they were the first rock stars to come, I beg to differ. He traveled 4,000 miles and over 6 million people saw Lafayette during the tour and in some of the smallest cities that were visiting around the country. Lafayette's visit in 1824 is still the most important thing that happened in that town. It's kind of incredible. And as we travel around, we're trying to accentuate three things that we think are important.
Number one, history is important. All the questions about the future can be answered simply by looking in the past. Everything is cyclical. In 1824, we were going through a really tough election. Our country was divided. And look at where we are now. So we're just trying to make sure people understand that history is an important thing. Math and science are important, don't get me wrong. But history is important too. The other thing we're trying to talk about is the Franco-American Alliance. A lot of Americans, sure they know that we came to the French Aid in World War I and World War II, but what they might not know is at the Battle of Yorktown, the final major battle of the Revolutionary War there were more French soldiers there than American. We would not have won that war without the French, without their help, without their money, without their guns, without their ships.
And that's a debt we owe them. And this friendship that we have with them is almost 250 years old. So this is an important ally that's been an ally of ours more than any other country. And we want people to learn that. We want teachers to teach that. And that's another one of our goals. And of course, our last goal is him, Lafayette. Why we want to make sure people know about him, not only as a swashbuckling young general in the 18th century, but more importantly, and what we're going to talk about today, as a human rights champion, as an abolitionist, as a feminist, as a friend of the Native Americans, as a conservationist. And also, you know, as a man that believed that all people were created equal, he believed in it. We wrote it, he believed in it. And when he came back in 1824 and saw that we weren't living that way, he was disappointed. So we're going to talk about that today. Lafayette is a human rights champion. That's where we're getting most of the traction. That's what we want to talk about today. And thanks to Bill, that's what we're going to be doing. I'm honored to be here. Thank you so much, Bill.
Bill Jeffway
Very well put. Thank you. And I didn't necessarily know if I'd be here today when I started researching Lafayette a couple of years ago. A lot of people are skeptical. I was skeptical. Is there necessarily something to learn that's relevant today? And I was just astounded at what I kept finding. So that's what I want to share with you today while keeping an eye on the clock. So I ended up, after changing the title of this program, 85 Times, with Lafayette Endures. Big Moves and Intimate Gestures. A Profound Commitment to Truth. And I think when I take you through what my findings are about Lafayette's relationship with local people, as well as his international moves, is that he was a man who was deeply principled and deeply committed to the truth. He has some great quotes about what truth is.
Truth Is a timely topic these days. And the idea of big moves and intimate gestures, I think is more about walking the walk. Actions speak louder than words. All those things where often leaders may talk about an ambition or even inspire us to an ambition, but not do the hands-on work. Lafayette did the hands-on work. So that's how I ended up with these particular words of introduction. It is about the Franco American relationship at the core of it, and within that embedded, even though, you know, I was thinking, we talk about the special relationship with England, right? But they still have a monarchy. So we actually have a, a more special relationship with France as a republic, especially when you consider the degree to which Lafayette was involved in creating the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens in 1789 in France. So, not only inspired by Thomas Jefferson, but also Lafayette tapped into Jefferson to help create this Declaration of Rights, which was a centerpiece of the French Revolution at its very origins. So in the most profound way, what Lafayette represents is the Franco American relationship, where we share these values of equality and liberty.
Like I said, it's one thing to believe this, it's another to put it into practice. And I found this quote of Lafayette that he made quite late in his life about truth. So with all the lessons of the American Revolution and the French Revolution behind him, and the French Revolution was a lot more difficult for him for a lot of reasons we'll talk to. He made this comment to a group of people, saying and I quote, “Gentlemen, true moderation consists of discovering what is true
and just, and firmly abiding by it. When it is said that four and four make eight, and an extravagant person pretends that they make 10, is it more reasonable to maintain that four and four make nine? Discover what is true and just, and firmly abide by it.” End quote.
So his point was that we cannot compromise on truth. And in this instance, I think the most profound implications came from his seeing truth in the statement, as Chuck indicated, that when we say “all persons are created equal and have equal rights,” that that is a, a total universal truth that he embraced, without compromise. I like to talk about the big moves that he made, because sometimes that's what we know Lafayette best for, is having persuaded the King of France to have France come, not in any small way, but in a really major way to be involved in the American Revolution, while at the same time having these intimate gestures. Maybe the one I like the most is this young teenage boy named Louis Hayden in the South saw Lafayette tip his hat to him. He was an enslaved teenage boy in the South. And Louis Hayden later wrote that he looked around just to make sure there wasn't anyone else around him. And that Lafayette was really tipping his hat to him, an enslaved boy. And he said, once he realized that it was truly Lafayette reaching out to Lewis Hayden and recognizing him that he decided to dedicate his life to becoming an abolitionist, he ended up being elected into the Massachusetts Senate. And Louis Hayden is one of the better known abolitionists, Black abolitionists of the time. And he credits Lafayette's specific intimate hat gesture as being the inspiration behind his life’s ambition. And I'll show you countless others. There were many French leaders who came to America in 1776 looking for glory. And it was getting a little annoying to Congress because it seemed that the persons coming were more interested in a title or some compensation. And instead, Lafayette struck Congress as someone who was bringing a significant amount of wealth and who deeply believed in the principle that he was fighting for. So incredibly, amazingly, Lafayette was only 19 years old when Congress made him a Major General. And that helps to explain why, in 1824, he was the last living major general, because he was so young during the American Revolution.
So while some leaders stepped in at a very high conceptual level of leadership, there were all these revolutions going on at the same time underneath. Race; the debate and discussion was largely around slavery. But there were revolutions brewing relating to gender, economic status, and faith. All these mini revolutions were happening underneath the bigger ones. And then within that, there were named persons within the movements like the questions around race with Louis Hayden as an example. And what I think is unique about Lafayette is that he really embraced all those three levels. And while we know a lot about what he did with the abolitionist movement, I want to also point out Mary Woolstonecraft, who was a feminist who inserted herself into the French Revolution. She was English, but was attracted to the French Revolution like many were, because that's where the action was. Of course, it got bloody, it got out of control. It got deadly. But this is an example of the kind of many revolutions that were going on underneath the American Revolution and the French Revolution: race, gender, faith, individual and personal freedom.
If you look around Dutchess County, we have the hamlet of Lafayetteville, which then inspired the name of an inn and a recreation area. Four towns have a street named for him. The town of LaGrange used to be called the Town of Freedom. It was renamed shortly after his visit for Lafayette’s great estate and home in France. And when soldiers came back from World War I, they created an American Legion Post in Poughkeepsie called the Lafayette Post, which remains active today. The Masons and the International Order of Odd Fellows also created lodges with his name. So we find his name almost everywhere.
But I find the most interesting thing is when we find the name used in the most personal way: when parents name a newborn son Lafayette. This is a little snapshot of 19th century directories that show at least some of the examples where Lafayette was used as a first name. Some were doctors, some were truckmen, some were laborers. The earliest I could find is Lafayette Luddington. The Ludington family is a very patriotic, well-known family in Southern Dutchess. They named a son DeLafayette in 1783. But we also find Lafayette Smith, Lafayette
McFarilin, for example. Both Lafayette Gold and Lafayette Johnson are identified as so-called colored laborers. And we're going to talk a bit more about Lafayette Williams who was also Black. We did not have a big population in Dutchess County at the time. There were quite a few Lafayette's of all economic stripes and racial backgrounds. So I find this very telling that the name would be used in such a personal way by so many parents.
As I go through the first part of my talk I'm going to quickly talk about the American and French Revolution – in like two minutes – because a lot of information about them can be found elsewhere. And I want to focus on things that are not often talked about.
But we do need a little background so we know how locals perceived Lafayette as he arrived. And then we'll look at 1824 as a snapshot and what it was like here for the various people who were out greeting him. Lafayette is frequently shown with George Washington in this iconic father-son relationship. The age difference was great, but the respect was very quickly found. This depicts the two of them at Valley Forge. Early in his responsibilities, Lafayette was shot in the leg in the battle at Brandywine, Pennsylvania, but carried on leading his troops as if he weren't injured or shot. This greatly impressed Washington. Washington handed him to the doctor, saying, treat him as if he were my son. We also have stories of great Lafayette victories like at Yorktown in Virginia. So Lafayette would have been very well known to any local American for his role in the Revolutionary War and his iconic partnership with Washington. One of the more interesting things we have in our Dutchess County Historical Society Collections is this Masonic certificate of Nicholas Fish, from 1780. And it's interesting for a couple reasons. I can't emphasize enough how important the Masons were and how important Lafayette was to the Masons. I believe Lafayette remains the person with the greatest number of Masonic honors. This is the Masonic certificate for Nicholas Fish, who we see depicted, and some of the people signing this in 1780 would go on to be at the events in 1824, surrounding Lafayette and greeting him. There are Livingston's and noted Revolutionary War veteran Swartwout, and names that you'll find are very common in service in the Revolutionary War. So we'll keep an eye on Nicholas Fish because his descendants kept their involvement with, and admiration for, Lafayette very much alive into the 20th century..
The Society of the Cincinnati was created as the order of the descendants of officers in the Revolutionary War. George Washington specifically asked Lafayette to create an order for France, which he did. And this was a kind of a sign, if you needed one, and you didn't reall, that Lafayette was very well established and highly regarded by the elite of our country at the time. But it really didn't end there. Let’s look at other people he inspired beyond the establishment.
This particular depiction on the left is meant to beLafayette at Yorktown with a Black man who is James Armisted – often associated with Lafayette. The artistic depiction of the Black man as kind of a body servant or waiter as they would've called him at the time, is an iconic but not historically accurate role Armistead. James Armisted was deployed by Lafayette as a double agent in military intelligence.
And James Armisted infiltrated the highest levels of the British military acting as a double agent and bringing information back to the Americans – so well beyond the role of a waiter. This was, I think, especially important considering that, at the time, the pro-slavery argument was that these persons of color do not have the intellectual capacity to, to be anything but enslaved. So that Lafayette would deploy this person in the most sensitive of military intelligence actions speaks volumes. Unfortunately, when James Armistead finished his service, he was returned to enslavement. And it wasn't until (and here I go with what I mean about these intimate gestures) Lafayette picked up a pen and personally wrote about Armistead's service, saying he gave essential service in intelligence from the enemy, that Lafayette was able to ensure Armistead’s freedom. That to me is an amazing story that he not, he didn't forget about the person, the man, James Armistead. He kept an eye out for him very carefully. And before I leave him, I'll just say that in 1825 during Lafayette's tour, he actually saw James Armistead in the audience,
stopped and embraced him. Shaking hands, embracing people, tipping of the hat, writing a letter. These are all the intimate gestures that showed that Lafayette went beyond just promises and ideas, and really gave attention to specific individual people. And he kept track of them for the rest of their lives.
There are two famous letters that Lafayette wrote to George Washington about a scheme where he wanted to buy a plantation and show that there could be a process of educating and freeing the enslaved that would put away the argument that the pro-slavery argument espoused, which was arguing that you couldn't just abolish it immediately, it would be chaos.
And Lafayette was saying, well, then let's come up with a methodical way of actually moving people toward education, individual responsibility and freedom. So in February of 1783, Lafayette wrote to George Washington, saying, “let us unite in purchasing a small estate to have this experiment.” Washington pretty much said, you really have a noble heart. This is so typical of you, and we should talk about it sometime. We don't know if they ever spoke about it. But by the time Lafayette was actually doing this in 1786, he wrote to Washington again, “Dear General, I've purchased a plantation in Cayenne (French Guiana), and I'm going to free my Negroes…” and so on. And he lays out the plan to do so. And again, Washington says, you have a noble heart. This reflects very well on you, but it's not something that he could get involved in at the time.
This whole plan gets derailed by the French Revolution. But this is an example in my mind of his actions really living up to his words. Thomas Clarkson, the British abolitionist, said that Lafayette wrote to him, I don't think we actually have the letter, but he quoted Lafayette as saying in 1827, that quote, “ I never would have drawn my sword in the cause of America if I could have conceived I was founding a land of slavery.” End quote. So whether he actually penned those words or not, we certainly know that this was his very strong belief: that slavery needed to be abolished.
Lafayette was unique in that he persuaded 50 of the Oneida nation to serve in the deadliest of hands-on combats in the war. The Oneida also suffered through the deadly winter at Valley Forge. Lafayette had a very warm, respectful relationship with Indigenous people in general, and particularly Oneida. Famously in 1825, this was the second part of his 13 month trip, when he was in Oneida in upstate New York, Lafayette found there were no Oneida. And he said, well, where are my friends? The Oneida? Well, they hadn't been invited. So Lafayette insisted that they be invited. And then Lafayette offered a private audience with those, like Henry Cornelius, who he had known from the Revolutionary War. So Lafayette wanted to point out through actions more than words, that even by 1825, we were beginning to forget the contributions of the Oneida in the very place where they lived. And Lafayette did not want to let that happen.
Now we will look at Lafayette’s role in the French Revolution in two minutes. It's complicated, right? Because there's a King and Lafayette feels, given everything in his view, that there ought to be a way to have a, a King, a kind of a constitutional monarchy where the King doesn't have to go away, but the people can still be the voice of government. And he tried to walk this very fine line that was sometimes impossible to walk. It was during this time he dropped the honorific “Marquis” and was known just as Lafayette. Buthow did people locally come to know what Lafayette was up to? So if you look at the Poughkeepsie Journal of 1790, there's a great story about there being 200,000 people working in Paris to create a massive outdoor space at the Champs de Mars to celebrate the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. It is reported that Lafayette, as well as the mayor, brought shovels and wheelbarrows. And it even goes so far as to say, although there's no evidence this was actually true, but it makes a great story. It says, his Majesty, Louis the 16th, laid hold of a wheelbarrow and desired it might be filled. When it was half filled, the men stopped, but the King said, fill away, fill away! My good friends, don't let it be said that so strong a built labor as I disgraced himself with half a load.
And this is important because this was an attempt to depict the King as someone who we could kind of keep around and be friends with and he'd share his burden with us. And that didn't always work out so well. Speaking of intimate gestures, when the crowd was calling for the head of Maria Antoinette, Lafayette very famously kissed her hand to calm the crowd. So it worked then for a moment (not eventually as she lost her head, unfortunately). But this to me is an example of Lafayette being aware of the power of intimate gestures. We can now add the kissing of a hand to the tipping of a hat, to the writing of a letter to these other gestures that were very personal and individual.
And so Lafayette did stave off a crowd for some time. We find the depiction on the left of the King and Queen and royal family trying to escape, unsuccessfully. We also see the Champs de Mars, where the wheelbarrow work was going on the year before. But this year, events turned deadly when the crowd turned unruly and Lafayette, who was in charge of the National Guard, clashed with citizens, giving orders to begin firing upon them.
And so this is where things started to get dicey. Lafayette tried to escape. He ends up spending five years in prison, some of it joined by his wife and children. But five years in an Austrian prison had to have an impact on Lafayette. So he emerges from that amazing story, the hero of two worlds as he came to be called, of the American and French Revolution. This is the background, when, in 1824, as this country was approaching its 50th anniversary, July 4th, 1826, that Congress asked President Monroe to invite Lafayette. So by the time he's arriving, Americans have all those amazing stories about Lafayette from the time he served in the American Revolution to all that he served and suffered in the French Revolution. And that's what we find is on the American people's mind when he arrived in 1824.
This was an amazing period of time: the two periods of the four year terms of President James Monroe were described at the time as an era of good feelings. The second time he was elected, Monroe won all the electoral college votes except one rogue voter. And the description at the moment, and the way it was talked about at the time, was this era of good feelings. Political divisions were going away, things were great. And that's actually the language they used, the era of good feelings. However, as Chuck mentioned, in 1824 while Lafayette was here, (he arrived in August and elections were in November) you had one the most contentious elections in US history because, with the involvement of third candidate Henry Clay, no one got enough electoral college votes to win.
So the election went to the House of Representatives as the US Constitution required. This is where what is termed then, and called now, the corrupt bargain was made. Henry Clay became the Secretary of State for Adams because Clay directed his electors to vote for Adams. So you have an election outcome that many felt did not represent the people’s will. For example, New York State did not have a direct election for President, individual persons were not asked their choice. The New York State Assembly voted for presidential electors. So you have this very contentious election. And then, of course, within a generation, you have the Civil War. Two percent of the American population died from the war. That's the equivalent of 7 million people today. How could we be talking about an era of good feelings? And if you read a little bit further down the article on the Duchess Observer, you start to see the cracks. They mention that this whole idea of an era of good feelings is, in their words, “surrendering to one eighth of the population, the power and triumphs achieved by the patriotism of the rest.”
In other words, the White, wealthy men (there were property requirements for voting) who had all the political power and the votes were only one-eighth of the population. And that is what's happening when Lafayette steps foot in America in 1824. The era of good feeling is going away. But it was not an era of good feeling where all voices were being heard. Because if you had asked an enslaved man or an Indigenous person losing their land, or a woman who felt she had no political voice, if it were an era of good feelings, they would have said no. It was not so much an era of good feelings as it was an era of good feelings if we only listened to one-eighth of the population. So Lafayette arrived at a critical time in the United States where these other
voices want a seat at the increasingly diverse American table, whether that's based or regardless of race or gender or faith. This is also from our collections, an invitation to the Van Vliet family to attend the fete in New York City, which was the beginning of Lafayette's tour up and down the Hudson. He went from New York City to Albany and back.
The ball was postponed, not once, but twice. This greatly added to the incredible sense of anticipation because Lafayette was running behind constantly. No doubt, I think, because he was shaking hands, kissing babies, tipping his hat, engaging in all those intimate gestures we love so much.
We should point out that in 1824, New York City gave Samuel Morse (who we associate more for his later invention of the telegraph) the commission to paint the official portrait of Lafayette, as Morse was a famous portrait painter at the time. It hangs in City Hall. It wasn't until the 1850s that Morse came to Poughkeepsie.
This is the path of Lafayette on the steamboat James Kent going north on September 16th. He stopped at Poughkeepsie at 7 in the morning, then went on to Staatsburg to see former Governor Morgan Lewis, and then onto Clermont, the great Livingston estate for a massive ball and where he would spend the night.
And then it was on the way down on September 19 that he stopped at Messina and Montgomery Place in Red Hook to visit Janet Livingston Montgomery, and at JP Dewint’s estate in what we call Beacon. So I'm going to take you through the specific tour, but with a view to looking at it through the lens of the people in the audience: the elite, the persons of color, working class people, women. What did they see in him? So in Poughkeepsie, there we have the trail at the foot of Main Street, going up Main in an open carriage. The Mayor of Poughkeepsie, CV Frost, was a Quaker. As such, he did not feel it was appropriate to be too visible in both the pomp and ceremony and the military aspects. So CV Frost, the mayor, loaned his beautiful four white horses and carriage, but remained out of sight until Lafayette got to the hotel. Quakers were concerned about things too militaristic or involving pomp and circumstance.
Lafayette hats were made for sale in Poughkeepsie, and there was a promotion of Temple of Fortune lottery tickets. The public assembled on Market Street outside the Forbus House, where Henry Livingston made some comments on behalf of the locals. And Lafayette made comments back. Henry Livingston said to the big crowd outside recognizing how important the event was that, quote: “the children who are now mixed among this crowd, which now surround you Lafayette, will excitedly tell their children that on this day they beheld and blessed their country's benefactor and friend.” End quote.
And wouldn't you know, we actually have a perfect example of this happening. John Howard Brown of Rhinebeck wrote in 1916, talking about his mother's story of her experience of meeting Lafayette at Governor Morris’s house in Staatsburg. Brown wrote, and I quote, “ I heard repeatedly the story from my mother's lips that the gallant Frenchmen not only took her and each young girl by the hand, but even stooped to kiss them as they passed him.” End quote. Intimate gestures. We can now add, stooping and kissing to handshakes, tips of the hats and penned letters!
As I said, they had a large ball at Clermont. As is typical, the records at the time report only on the better known establishment persons. So we can only imagine who else might have been there but we know there would have been enslaved persons. While we can not know for sure whether she was there, we do know that one of the Livingston family’s enslaved women was called Charlotte. We know this because for over a century, the lake that we today call Lake Taconic was called Lake Charlotte, and this is in several reliable instances explained to have been so named after an enslaved woman of that name who had a cabin there. This is kind of the indirect way we start to piece together who were the lesser-known but essential persons at the great ball.
This is the John R. Livingston estate Massena where Lafayette first topped in, in Red Hook, before going onto Janet Livingston Montgomery at Montgomery Place.
Montgomery Place has a special history, not only because Mrs. Montgomery was living there, but later her brother Edward Livingston lived there. After that, Edward’s daughter Cora, and her husband Thomas Barton also had close ties to Lafayette.
Edward Livingston made an appeal as a congressman to invite Lafayette in January of 1824 when he was a congressman from Louisiana. Thomas Barton, his son-in-law, was charge d'affaires in Paris when Lafayette died, and was a pall bearer of Lafayette’s casket at burial ceremonies. So several generations of families at Montgomery Place were intimate and close to Lafayette. Again, how do we infer or understand who some of the enslaved persons might have been during the visit? We don't know that Sally Gilson was necessarily enslaved, but it's very likely because census records show that all the persons of color in Montgomery Place were enslaved. So perhaps it was Sally Gilson who was among those who was at the event with Lafayette at the reception at Montgomery Place.
This desk or bureau is a gift that you can see this Saturday at the Van Wyck House in Fishkill. This is a gift that was given by Lafayette when he stopped there on his return as a thank you to the Brinkerhoff family. And this bowl also was a gift from Lafayette to the same family at the same time. So these are yet another example of intimate gestures.
This is a favorite story because even the outcasts were embraced by Lafayette. As Lafayette was approaching the Clermont Ball, Henry Beekman Livingston, who was the outcast member of the family, rode out mid-Hudson River to stop Lafayette, because he wasn't invited to the ball. And Lafayette welcomed him on the boat and embraced him.
And we know this because I have a book here and a first hand account. Julia Delafield, the granddaughter of Gov. Lewis was actually in the boat with Lafayette when Henry Beekman Livingston stopped them midstream and they embraced and spoke. Lafayette was willing to meet with any and all.
We have to remember that in 1824, New York was a slave state. It is startling to look at ads in the newspaper where persons are for sale. But such was the case. And another, often less reported risk that we've discovered was more common than thought, was the kidnapping of free Blacks into illegal enslavement in the south.
There is no better example of why Lincoln famously said a divided house can not stand, that the United States would be all free or all slave – because a “free Black” in a free state like New York was subject to kidnapping. We know of two cases so there must have been more. One in 1831 and one in 1832. Free Blacks being kidnapped and sold into slavery where they were more “valuable”. So this was another risk that historically has been under-reported.
I talked about the gesture of the tipping of the hat to Louis Hayden in 1825 and the stories of Lafayette reaching out to Washington. These and other stories were republished by Frederick Douglas in his newspaper, the North Star in 1849.
The story you're going to hear a little bit more about through the historical fiction of DN Bashir is the story of Thomas and Jane Williams of Union Vale, who named their son Lafayette Williams shortly after the 1824 visit. He was born around 1827 and he went on to serve and to die in the US colored troops in the Civil War. It looks like his son enlisted underage and his son also died in the Civil War. That was the premise for the work that DN has done that you'll see shortly.
In terms of Indigenous people, in 1824, when Lafayette arrived, the Creek Nation was losing millions of acres of its homeland in Georgia. At the same time, land confiscation was making Andrew Jackson a military hero. Again, just kind of setting the scene of what Lafayette was encountering when he was here in 1824. There would've been a good number of Indigenous people who were living locally. One of them might've been one of them would've been Susan
May, who we know was an Indigenous person that married the son of an enslaved man, Hannah Coshire was of the Schachticoke, who live in eastern Dutchess and Connecticut. And Henry Catskill was a well known family of Indigenous persons in southern Duchess. So there was more of a population than you might think.
In terms of sub revolutions under the big revolutions, the political movement of the working class was called the mechanics, political movement. Mechanics, meaning in very general terms, working class people, who said they couldn't afford land and were landless slaves. Their hero became Fannie Wright. And Fannie Wright was really an acolyte of Lafayette, so much so that with a significant age difference, she and her sister asked Lafayette to adopt them as children. That did not sit well with the family. And Fannie Wright had to repair her relationships. But she was brought by Lafayette to Thomas Jefferson at Monticello to John Adams. And Fannie Wright became very close to Lafayette and became synonymous with the working class movement.
If you were a working party man, you were called quote “a Fanny Wright man.” There's a wonderful story about how on Market Street in Poughkeepsie, Lafayette stopped. There was a very clearly impoverished old veteran and he went out and embraced him. And the paper reported, and I quote,” that the old man's countenance lit up and he was inspired with a new glow of life.” End quote. Another kind of intimate gesture by Lafayette, in this case, regardless of economic status. Again with a view to understanding what local people learned about Lafayette through local newspapers, we find a reference in 1825 in the Kinderhook Herald that is telling. During his tour, when Lafayette heard that a veteran of the Revolutionary War who had risen to the height of a Brigadier General in Rhode Island was in debtors’ prison, Lafayette paid the debt on the man’s behalf and he was released.
Lafayette died in 1834. And as I said, an important link to the United States was Thomas Barton, the charge d'affaires in France, who was in charge of organizing America’s response. So everything else we're going to talk about as I wrap up is after his death.
It was just 20 years later, in 1855, when Lafayette’s name was invoked by both sides of the debate over the risks and rewards of allowing so many impoverished Irish Catholic immigrants into the country. By this time, Samuel F.B. Morse was living in Poughkeepsie where he published statements in support of slavery and, like we are about to see, against Catholics. Morse argued that the Pope would control the Catholics and it was not viable to have a democracy with this kind of outside foreign influence. Morse wrote, and I quote, “if ever the liberties of the United States are destroyed, they'll be by romanist priests.” End quote. Claiming this was a quote from Lafayette. But another person with local ties, Jared Sparks, who married into an important family in Hyde Park, and knew Lafayette well said, and I quote, “ I often saw Lafayette in Paris in 1829.” And he goes on to point by point explain that Lafayette was not anti-Catholic, but he was adamant that we not allow faith to get in the way of our views. So Lafayette's name gets invoked in the pro and anti-Catholic argument well after his death.
And then as we move into the 20th century it really is the outbreak of World War I in 1914 that revives feelings and memories of Lafayette. One of our esteemed guests here today is John Winthrop Aldrich or Wint, who helped me understand some of the dynamics of the family events that went here at the Red Hook estate of Rokeby. This great estate housed the descendants of Livingstons, including John Armstrong, and families of Astor, Chapman, and Aldrich – all of whom were devout fans of Lafayette.
The first such fan was Victor Chapman. He was living with his parents in France when war broke out and the parents left France. But Victor Chapman enlisted in what is like the Foreign Legion and went on to serve in the Lafayette Escadrille. He was killed in service early on. The Lafayette Escadrille was the first “air force.” And once Victor Chapman was killed, they mentioned that at the usual 4th of July ceremony at Lafayette's grave Lafayette's buried in Paris, that Chapman's name was linked with that of Lafayette and the bond of good feeling between the sister republics remembered.Subsequent to the Lafayette Escadrille, we have the
name of Lafayette being introduced in World War I when General Pershing brings troops to Paris to help in World War I. The phrase, “Lafayette, we are here,” becomes a rallying cry to persuade Americans who are skeptical about being in a foreign war that Americans owed a debt of gratitude – to France because of Lafayette. “We are here, Lafayette!” became the clarion call for World War I.
Not to be outdone in 1918 (remember, women are still fighting for the vote nationally) Evelyn Wayne Wright, the suffragist leader, uses the words at Lafayette Square, at the Lafayette Statue Lafayette. Her words, and I quote, “Lafayette, we are here! We the women of the United States denied the liberty which you helped gain, for which we've asked in vain for 60 years –turn to you to plead for us. Speak Lafayette! Dead these hundred years, but still living in the hearts of the American people.” End quote.
The Chapman family led a successful effort to create the national holiday, Lafayette Day, which took place on Lafayette’s birthday, September 6. It was also the date, in 1918, of the Battle of the Marne, a successful Franco-British collaboration that pushed back German troops from reaching Paris. Victor Chapman’s father, John wrote a poem and recited it at West Point on Lafayette Day in 1920.
Famously, the American flag was raised and lowered at Lafayette's grave all during the occupation in World War II.
Wint Aldrich, who as I mentioned earlier is in the audience today, explained to me that his great-uncle, Congressman Hamilton Fish III, created the Order of Lafayette in 1958 to recognize the importance of the Franco American relationship in the Cold War. The award that went to such persons as Dwight Eisenhower. Hamilton Fish III was actually the grandson of the first Hamilton Fish, who as a young boy accompanied Lafayette on his 1824 tour with his father, Nicolas Fish, who we talked about earlier. Hamilton Fish III used to like to say to people, as he offered a handshake, and I quote, “shake the hand of the man who shook the hand, who shook the hand of Lafayette. I think I got that right!”
Now we would just call that four degrees of separation. But again, here we have another story, another instance of an intimate gesture having some staying power. I am sure Wint would be delighted to shake the hand of anyone who wants to be able to say that they shook the hand that shook the hand, well you know how it goes!
Isn't it interesting that Hamilton Fish III felt it was important to tell that story of Lafayette shaking hands with people. And that's what kept coming back to me, these intimate connections.
I'm going to end by looking at how the United States was approaching the 50th anniversary of the United States in 1824.
Remember, Lafayette came here in part as an exercise to unify the country as we approached our 50th anniversary. The specific date of the 50th anniversary, July 4, 1826, was the date that both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died. [Aside:] James Monroe waited until July 4, 1832 to pass away.
It was not until our country’s 51st anniversary that the date became meaningful for persons of color, as it was not until then that slavery was abolished in New York State. This is what the Kinderhook Herald had to say on June 28th, 1827 as that date approached: “The anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is again about to be celebrated. More than half a century has now elapsed since our fathers pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor in support of the doctrine that all men are created equal. It is a question whether our constitution contains the seeds of, of decay which are visible in those of Greece and Rome. The general and increasing intelligence which pervades all classes in this happy country, will, it may be reasonably be hoped, present a formidable barrier to the inroads of luxury, and form an insurmountable obstacle to the ambitions designs of an artful demagogue. So it's not visionary to suppose we will continue to increase in strength and beauty, to a period beyond…and that
yearly recurrence of this jubilee shall be celebrated until time shall be no longer. The ensuing anniversary is rendered peculiarly interesting by the circumstance that it is the day fixed by law for the abolition of slavery in this state. Who does not rejoice that that foul blot upon our escutcheon is to be finally wiped away? And who does not pray that the example may be followed by every state in the Union, and thus remove the only contradiction to the maxim that all men are created free and equal?”
So as we move on to the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, I think there's some really interesting parallels to draw from Lafayette’s life during the ambitious period of the American Revolution, and the critical moment of the country approaching its 50th anniversary in 1824. Because it provides the prospect of the promise and ambition, and the hard work of constantly creating a more perfect union. Lafayette inspires us to ask: what principle are we standing for, especially around the idea that all are created equal? How truthful are we a being? Are we abiding by the truth? Are we making big moves on the big stage and are we following that up with intimate gestures on a very personal and intimate basis? And this is why I came to believe after looking at Lafayette for a couple of years, that the lessons of his leadership, which was not just to talk about things, but to do things and then to follow up with them literally to the end that these are valuable lessons as we approach the next anniversary of the United States. And with that, I thank you.