Vita Lafayette Brief life of an American champion: 1757-1834 by laura auricchio

arie joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, mar- memory arose when President James Monroe and Congress invited quis de Lafayette, was the wealthy French nobleman him to visit as “The Nation’s Guest.” As Lafayette toured every state Mwho volunteered at 19 to fight in ’s in the Union between August 1824 and September 1825, grateful citi- army, was wounded at the Battle of Brandywine, and became a liv- zens preparing to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of independence ing symbol of the Franco-American alliance that defeated Great fêted him at banquets, balls, dinners, and parades; municipalities Britain in the War of Independence. Though best remembered as renamed streets, schools, and parks in his honor; and entrepreneurs the triumphant youth Washington considered an adopted son, the sold trinkets bearing his name and face at every price point. marquis experienced many bitter disappointments in his 76 years. His first excursion, after landing in New York, was to . Soon after the Bastille fell on July 14, 1789, he was placed at the helm He visited John Adams in Quincy; attended Commencement at of the National Guard by Parisians who hoped he would lead their Harvard (which had made him a doctor of laws in 1784, and now nation to a new era of freedom. Instead, as events grew increas- granted a master’s to his son, George Washington Lafa­yette, who’d ingly polarized, Lafa­yette—who believed the monarchy should studied there during his father’s exile); and toured battlefields. Ev- be reformed, not abolished—lost the support of republicans and erywhere, he spoke about the War of Independence. Inadvertently, royalists alike. In 1792, with the Jacobins seeking his arrest as an he also helped ignite the “Battle After the Battle”—a debate about enemy of the revolution, he fled to the Austrian Netherlands (now where the Revolution began—when, during an 1825 stop in Ken- Belgium), where he was imprisoned as an enemy of the king. nebunk, , he dismayed the residents of Concord, Massachu- He never fully regained his French popularity, but Lafayette en- setts, by proclaiming that “the first shot was fired at Lexington.” sured that his American fame would endure. Having established As death claimed Adams, Monroe, and their peers, Lafayette was himself as the new nation’s foremost French ally during the war, he increasingly sought out as one of the last surviving links to the na- petitioned in 1782 for a role in the peace negotiations, lobbied his tion’s founding. One admirer was Jared Sparks, A.B. 1815, A.M. ’18, government for favorable trade relations with the in the future Harvard president, who published a 12-volume Diplomatic 1783, and commissioned a gold-engraved copy of the Declaration Correspondence of the American Revolution, a 10-volume Works of Benjamin of Independence to hang in his study. To the American secretary Franklin, and four volumes of Washington’s correspondence. In an of foreign affairs, Robert R. Livingston, he wrote, “I Have a Great 1826 letter (now in Houghton Library), Sparks explained that he Value for My American Popularity, and I Want the people at large was “collecting materials illustrative of the History of the American to know My Affection to them, and My zeal for their Service.” Revolution” and ventured that the marquis might “not be unwilling A classical education based on texts such as Plutarch’s Lives and to contribute to such an object.” Livy’s History of Rome had made him keenly aware of the power of Lafayette replied with characteristic enthusiasm: “What more the historian’s pen to shape the memory of an era. Despite a failed gratifying sacred employment can I have than to be instrumental… early effort to influence the narrative of the American Revolution in Increasing your stack of materials for the monument you are as related by the notoriously cantankerous parson writing?” He provided copies of his correspondence with Wash- William Gordon in a four-volume history published in 1788, Lafa­ ington and invited Sparks to visit La Grange, where “I have a very yette never relinquished his dream of crafting his own legacy. good American Library, some papers, and a memory not yet de- Writing history became one of his chief occupations when he re- cayed, all at your service.” Sparks did so in November 1828, tak- turned to France in 1799 after seven years of prison and exile. Barred ing more than 100 pages of notes based on anecdotes Lafayette re- from public activity by Napoleon, he spent much of the next 15 counted. The marquis also used his influence to enable a researcher years in his library at the chateau of La Grange, outside , sur- engaged by Sparks to consult documents that an official archivist rounded by portraits, including those of Washington, Benjamin had been disinclined to share with the American. Franklin, and six allies executed during the French Revolution. In 1839, thanking George Washington Lafayette for his father’s There he crafted memoirs recounting his tumultuous life, and com- posthumously published memoirs, Sparks called the volumes “a municated (as much as Napoleon’s censors allowed) with liberal- noble monument of one whose name and character are stamped on minded thinkers throughout Europe and Americans of all political the age in which he lived.” Lafayette had aimed for nothing less. stripes. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies after Waterloo, he be- came a tireless advocate on behalf of liberty throughout the world. Laura Auricchio ’90, dean of the School of Undergraduate Studies at The New An unparalleled opportunity to solidify his place in American School, is the author of The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered (Knopf).

46 March - April 2015 Lafayette became a friend of American artist and inventor Samuel F.B. Morse, who depicted him with Revolutionary icons Washington and Franklin in this 1826 portrait. Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Courtesy of the Collection of the Public Design Commission of the City of New York. Photograph by Glenn Castellano.

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746