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The Gazette of the American Friends of Lafayette No. 93 friendsoflafayette.org November 2020 Members of the American Friends of Lafayette gather at the Hornsby House Pavilion after a successful (albeit pared-down) annual Yorktown Victory Celebration. 2 Table of Contents Title Page President's Message 3-4 Character Matters: Perceptions of Lafayette and Lessons for Our Time 5-16 Yorktown Victory Celebration 17-18 Lafayette Birthday Celebration 2020 in Fayetteville, NC 19-22 Lafayette Alliance’s New Film Debuts 23-25 Bicentennial of Lafayette’s Triumphant Return 26-28 Lafayette and the 1832 Cholera Pandemic in France 29-30 The Story of a Statue 31-47 Trivia Question – Who Was France’s Chief Physician in America? 48-50 Wilmington’s Most Acclaimed Visitor 51-62 Farewell Tour Bicentennial Postage Stamp Proposal 63-64 Pierre Antoine de Chambrun – Honorary Lifetime AFL Member 65-67 The Lafayette Endowment at FSU – Building Bridges in a Community 68-70 The Lafayette Presentation Button 71-82 AFL at Colonial Williamsburg’s Veterans Day Filming Event 83 The Lafayette Society of Fayetteville Strengthens Bond with AFL 84 In Memoriam 85-87 The Curious Tale of the Man Holding the Horse in the Lafayette Memorial 88-103 Connecticut Tavern Signs 104-106 The Lafayette Legacy and the Women of Chavaniac 107-114 The Making of an American Hero: Lafayette at Brandywine 115-118 Lafayette and Slavery 119-122 Marking History Along the Lafayette Trail 123-127 Diane Shaw Visits the Lafayette Collection at Methodist University 128-129 AFL Member Wins DAR Award 130-132 Lafayette Letter Mystery 133-134 Birthday Cards for the Marquis de Lafayette 135 Trivia Answer – Who Was France’s Chief Physician in America? 136-138 Letters to the Gazette 139 3 President’s Message Dear Friend of Lafayette, In the midst of the pandemic, we have all had to adapt to a new way of life, and the AFL is no exception. Our annual meeting was held on July 28, 2020 by Zoom, and we had about 60 people attending. Bonnie Fritz, our Corporate Secretary and CZ (Chief Zoombie) administered the meeting, along with Chuck Schwam, Treasurer and event-planner extraordinaire. It was an excellent meeting, during which we heard committee reports, and our members chimed in as well. Out of the meeting came the idea of a Zoom panel of Lafayette scholars. On September 11, 2020, the AFL conducted its first Zoom panel discussion. We were privileged to have as panelists Lloyd Kramer, Paul Spaulding, and AFL President Emeritus Robert Crout. We had about 70 members in attendance. The audience was engaged, and we received numerous thumbs-ups and favorable comments on the chat function. Audience questions were so numerous that we extended the Zoom session an extra half hour. For those of you who were unable to attend, the video is available on the AFL website in the members-only portal. See also the article in this Gazette. We are planning another Zoom panel discussion to be held on Friday, December 4. Our panelists are four authors who write historical fiction and have included Lafayette in their works – Stephanie Dray, Jenny Cote, Dorothea Jensen, and Libby McNamee. We hope you will join us. The AFL was represented at in-person events on October 19, Yorktown Day, or as I like to call it, Surrender Day. We had great turnout; approximately 30 attended the Hornsby House function, which Chuck and the Bowditches determined would be a luncheon instead of our “World Famous” cocktail reception. The high attendance is reflective of the AFL’s strong presence in Virginia. We currently have 90 members in the Commonwealth as shown on the map prepared by Membership Chair Almut Spalding. 4 I started attending Yorktown Day in 2006, the 225th anniversary of the Surrender. Because of COVID-19 concerns, I was not in attendance this year, for only the second time since then. (The other time was when my daughter unilaterally chose to marry on October 18, 2014, and there was no red-eye flight from Boston to Virginia available.) Our membership continues to grow. Between June 1 and October 31, just five months, 35 new members joined, and two states were added to our catchment area. Our current membership is now 401. Wow! Best regards, Alan R. Hoffman 5 Character Matters Perceptions of Lafayette and Lessons for Our Time American Friends of Lafayette Online Panel Panelists: Lloyd S. Kramer, Paul S. Spalding, and Robert Crout Moderator: Alan R. Hoffman September 11, 2020 Introduction by Alan R. Hoffman Americans have for centuries been fascinated by and, it’s fair to say, entranced by Lafayette. This phenomenon is exemplified in the following by no means exclusive ways. There are today at least six active societies dedicated to preserving Lafayette’s memory and honoring his work: the American Friends of Lafayette, the Order of Lafayette in New York, the Lafayette Society of Fayetteville, North Carolina, the Massachusetts Lafayette Society, and the Lafayette Alliance in LaGrange, Georgia. Most recently, the Lafayette Trail has become a membership organization. Lafayette is one of a handful of foreigners whom Congress has made an honorary citizen. There are four state statutorily mandated Lafayette Days. Massachusetts and New Hampshire honor Lafayette on May 20, the anniversary of his death; Virginia honors him on March 14, the anniversary of his initial arrival in 1781 at Yorktown; and Georgia honors Lafayette on September 6, his birthday. There are roughly 80 cities, counties, townships, and towns that take their names from Lafayette or the home he lived in from 1799 until his death, La Grange. There are countless numbers of streets, squares, statues, and parks, as well as a mountain and a lake named for Lafayette. There are scores of Masonic chapters named “Lafayette Lodges.” What is it about Lafayette that has generated, over time, such widespread and sustained recognition and commemoration of the man, his life, and his work? As perhaps you have gleaned 6 from the title of this panel discussion, we think that the answer lies, at least in part, in the character of the man. In his book The Founders on the Founders: Word Portraits from the American Revolutionary Era, John P. Kaminski, founder and director of the Center for the Study of the American Constitution at the University of Wisconsin and prolific author in his own right, has compiled sketches written by the founders about each other, including self-appraisals. Listed alphabetically, John Adams follows immediately after Abigail Adams. If you exclude John Adam’s self-appraisals and those of Abigail, 75% of the rest of the appraisals of Adams are distinctly negative. Bitter adversaries though they were, Jefferson and Hamilton seemed to have shared a similar perception of Adams. Jefferson wrote to Madison on July 29, 1789, when he and Adams were still on cordial terms. In regard to Adam’s advocacy of an aristocratic title for the President, Jefferson wrote: “It is a proof the more of the justice of the character given by Dr. Franklin of my friend: ‘always an honest man, often a great one, but sometimes absolutely mad.’” In a letter dated July 1, 1800, Hamilton went a bit further, writing: Doctor Franklin, a sagacious observer of human nature, draw this portrait of Mr. Adams: -- ‘He is always honest, sometimes great, but often mad.’ I subscribe to the justness of this picture, adding as to the first trait of it this qualification – as far as a man excessively vain and jealous, and ignobly attached to place can be. If one pages forward to the section on Lafayette, the percentages are reversed. Exclusive of self-portraits, over 75% of the remainder are positive. The few negatives were mostly written by John Adams. On November 7, 1777, Baron de Kalb wrote: “[Lafayette] is a prodigy for his age; he is the model of valor, intelligence, judgment, good conduct, generosity, and zeal for the cause of liberty for this continent.” On October 17, 1784, Madison, after having spent about four weeks with Lafayette traveling through New York State, including a week at Fort Schuyler for the treaty negotiations with the Iroquois Nations, wrote to Jefferson from Philadelphia. In his letter, Madison offered the following appraisal of his travelling companion: The time I have lately passed with the M. has given me a pretty thorough insight into his character. With great natural frankness of temper he unites much address with very considerable talents, a strong thirst of praise and popularity. In his politics he says his three hobby horses are the alliance between France and the United States, the union of the latter and the manumission of the slaves. The two former are the dearer to him as they are connected with his personal glory. The last does him real honor as it is a proof of his humanity. In 7 a word I take him to be as amiable a man as can be imagined and as sincere an American as any Frenchman can be; one whose past services gratitude obliges us to acknowledge, and whose future friendship prudence requires us to cultivate. A “hobby horse” in this context means a preoccupation or favorite topic. As Lafayette matured, his “hobby horses” became more numerous: protection of French Protestants and other disadvantaged minorities; the rights of man as reflected in the preamble to the 1791 French Constitution that he drafted; national revolutions as a vehicle to foster the rights of man; defense and protection of European refugees like the Poles; and human rights broadly construed. As to his original hobby horses – the Alliance, a strong union of the states, and manumission of the slaves -- as well as his other causes as listed above – Lafayette was unwavering and consistent, no matter what vicissitudes he encountered or trials he suffered.

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