“He acts now a splendid but dangerous part,” wrote Gouverneur Morris. Lafayette himself felt the perils of his position. “How often, my well-beloved general,” he wrote to Washington early in the year, “have I regretted your sage counsels and friendly support. We have advanced in the career of the revolution without the vessel of state being wrecked against the rocks of aristocracy or faction.... At present, that which existed has been destroyed; a new political edifice is forming; without being perfect, it is sufficient to assure liberty. Thus prepared, the nation will be in a state to elect in two years a convention which can correct the faults of the constitution.” Alas! those two years had scarcely passed away before the hopeful champion of freedom was a prisoner, far away from his home, in an Austrian dungeon. But we will not anticipate.
Two months later, Lafayette wrote a most hopeful letter to Washington. “Our revolution,” he said, “pursues its march as happily as is possible with a nation which, receiving at once all its liberties, is yet subject to confound them with licentiousness.” He then spoke of the hinderances to speedy success in the establishment of a sound republican government, and said: “After having avowed all this, my dear general, I will tell you, with the same frankness, that we have made an admirable and almost incredible destruction of all the abuses, of all the prejudices; that all which was not useful to the people—all which did not come from them—has been retrenched; that, in considering the situation, topographical, moral, and political, of France, we have effected more changes in ten months than the most presumptive patriots could have hoped, and that the reports about our anarchy, our internal troubles, are greatly exaggerated.”
In conclusion, the marquis said: “Permit me, my dear general, to offer you a picture representing the Bastile, such as it was some days after I had given orders for its demolition, with the main key of the fortress of despotism. It is a tribute which I owe as a son to an adopted father—as an aid-de-camp to my general—as a missionary of liberty to its patriarch.”
The picture and key were placed in the hands of Thomas Paine, then in London, who was intending soon to visit the United States. His destination was changed to France, and after considerable delay he forwarded the precious mementoes, with a letter, in which he said:—
“I feel myself happy in being the person through whom the marquis has conveyed this early trophy of the spoils of despotism, and the first ripe fruit of American principles transplanted into Europe, to his great master and patron. When he mentioned to me the present he intended for you, my heart leaped with joy.... That the principles of America opened the Bastile is not to be doubted, and therefore the key comes to the right place.”
On the receipt of these presents early in August, Washington wrote to Lafayette, saying: “I have received your affectionate letter of the seventeenth of March by one conveyance, and the token of the victory gained by liberty over despotism by another; for both which testimonials of your friendship and regard, I pray you to accept my sincerest thanks. In this great subject of triumph for the new world and for humanity in general, it will never be forgotten how conspicuous a part you bore, and how much lustre you reflected on a country in which you made the first displays of your character.”
Referring in the same letter to the treaty which had been concluded with the Creeks, he said: “This event will leave us at peace from one end of our borders to the other, except when it may be interrupted by a small refugee banditti of Cherokees and Shawnees, who can be easily chastised, or even extirpated, if it shall become necessary.” He then added:—
“Gradually recovering from the distress in which the war left us, patiently advancing in our task of civil government, unentangled in the crooked politics of Europe, wanting scarcely anything but the free navigation of the Mississippi (which we must have, and as certainly shall have as we remain a nation), I have supposed that, with the undeviating exercise of a just, steady, and prudent national policy, we shall be the gainers, whether the powers of the old world may be in peace or war, but more especially in the latter case. In that case, our importance will certainly increase, and our friendship will be coveted.” The last clause foreshadows that neutral policy which Washington assumed for the government of the United States at a little later period, when great efforts were made to involve it in the meshes of European politics, by active sympathy with the democratic movements in France.
Rest at Mount Vernon was grateful to the wearied chief of the republic. Yet it was not absolute repose. As a conscientious public servant; as the chief officer of a government yet in a comparatively formative state, and charged with the highest trusts that can be committed to mortal man, he felt most sensibly the care of state, even in his quiet home on the banks of the Potomac. One subject, in particular, filled him with anxiety. He had ordered the chastisement of the Indians in the Ohio country, and troops had gone thither for the purpose. He had deprecated a war with the deluded savages, but good policy appeared to demand it; and on the thirtieth of September an expedition set out from Fort Washington, where the city of Cincinnati now stands, under General Harmer, a veteran of the Revolution. But from that time until his arrival in Philadelphia, at the close of November, Washington remained in profound ignorance of the operations or the fate of the expedition. On the second of November he wrote to General Knox, the secretary of war, expressing his surprise that no information of the expedition had been received, and saying: “This, in my opinion, is an undertaking of a very serious nature. I am not a little anxious to know the result of it.... This matter, favorable or otherwise in the issue, will require to be laid before the Congress, that the motives which induced the expedition may appear.”
On his arrival in Philadelphia, Washington received a letter from Governor Clinton, of New York, giving an account of Harmer's ill success against the Indians, reported by Captain Brant, the celebrated Mohawk warrior of the Revolution. “If this information of Captain Brant be true,” Washington wrote to Clinton in reply, “the issue of the expedition against the Indians will indeed prove unfortunate and disgraceful to the troops, who suffered themselves to be ambuscaded.”