“‘General: The House of Representatives of the United States, impelled alike by its own feelings and by those of the whole American people, could not have assigned to me a more gratifying duty than that of presenting to you cordial congratulations upon the occasion of your recent arrival in the United States, in compliance with the wishes of Congress; and to assure you of the very high satisfaction which your presence affords on this early theatre of your glory and renown. Although but few of the members who compose this body shared with you in the war of our Revolution, all have, from impartial history, or from faithful tradition, a knowledge of the perils, the sufferings, and the sacrifices which you voluntarily encountered, and the signal services, in America and in Europe, which you performed for an infant, a distant, and an alien people; and all feel and own the very great extent of the obligations under which you have placed our country. But the relations in which you have ever stood to the United States, interesting and important as they have been, do not constitute the only motive of the respect and admiration which the House of Representatives entertain for you. Your consistency of character, your uniform devotion to regulated liberty, in all the vicissitudes of a long and arduous life, also commands its admiration. During all the recent convulsions of Europe, amidst, as after the dispersion of every political storm, the people of the United States have beheld you, true to your old principles, firm and erect, cheering and animating, with your well-known voice, the votaries of liberty, its faithful and fearless champion, ready to shed the last drop of that blood which here you so freely and nobly spilt in the same holy cause.
“‘The vain wish has been sometimes indulged that Providence would allow the patriot after death to return to his country and to contemplate the intermediate changes which had taken place,—to view the forests felled, the cities built, the mountains levelled, the canals cut, the highways constructed, the progress of the arts, the advancement of learning, and the increase of population. General, your present visit to the United States is a realization of the consoling object of that wish. You are in the midst of posterity. Everywhere you must have been struck with the great changes, physical and moral, which have occurred since you left us. Even this very city, bearing a venerated name, alike endeared to you and to us, has since emerged from the forest which then covered its site. In one respect you behold us unaltered, and this is in the sentiment of continued devotion to liberty, and of ardent affection and profound gratitude to your departed friend, the father of his country, and to you, and to your illustrious associates in the field and the cabinet, for the multiplied blessings which surround us, and for the very privilege of addressing you which I now exercise. This sentiment, now fondly cherished by more than ten millions of people, will be transmitted, with unabated vigor, down the tide of time through the countless millions who are destined to inhabit the continent to the latest posterity.’
“While the speaker was addressing him, General La Fayette was very visibly affected. At the close of the address he seated himself for a moment to regain composure, and then rose, and in tones made thrilling by intense feeling, he made the following reply:—
“‘Mr. Speaker, and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives: While the people of the United States and their honorable representatives in Congress have deigned to make a choice of me, one of the American veterans, to signify in his person their esteem for our joint services and their attachment to the principles for which we have had the honor to fight and bleed, I am proud and happy to share those extraordinary favors with my dear Revolutionary companions; yet it would be, on my part, uncandid and ungrateful not to acknowledge my personal share in those testimonies of kindness, as they excite in my breast emotions which no words are adequate to express.
“‘My obligations to the United States, sir, far exceed any merit I might claim; they date from the time when I had the happiness to be adopted as a young soldier a favored son of America; they have been continued to me during almost a half-century of constant affection and confidence; and now, sir, thanks to your most gratifying invitation, I find myself greeted by a series of welcomes, one hour of which would more than compensate for the public exertions and sufferings of a whole life.
“‘The approbation of the American people and their representatives for my conduct during the vicissitudes of the European revolution is the highest reward I could receive. Well may I stand firm and erect, when in their names, and by you, Mr. Speaker, I am declared to have in every instance been faithful to those American principles of liberty, equality, and true social order, the devotion to which, as it has been from my earliest youth, so it shall continue to be to my latest breath.
“‘You have been pleased, Mr. Speaker, to allude to the peculiar felicity of my situation, when, after so long an absence, I am called to witness the immense improvements, the admirable communications, the prodigious creations, of which we find an example in this city, whose name itself is a venerated palladium. In a word, all the grandeur and prosperity of those happy United States, who, at the same time they nobly secure the complete assertion of American independence, reflect on every part of the world the light of a far superior civilization.
“‘What better pledge can be given of a persevering national love of liberty, when those blessings are evidently the result of a virtuous resistance to oppression, and institutions founded on the rights of men and the republican principle of self-government?
“‘No, Mr. Speaker, posterity has not begun for me, since, in the sons of my companions and friends I find the same public feelings, and, permit me to add, the same feelings in my behalf which I have had the happiness to experience in their fathers.
“‘Sir, I have been allowed, forty years ago, before a committee of a congress of thirteen states, to express the fond wishes of an American heart; on this day I have the honor and enjoy the delight to congratulate the representatives of the Union, so vastly enlarged, on the realization of those wishes, even beyond every human expectation, and upon the almost infinite prospects we can with certainty anticipate; permit me, Mr. Speaker, and gentlemen of the House of Representatives, to join to the expression of those sentiments a tribute of my lively gratitude, affectionate devotion, and profound respect.’