Here is one of my companions in captivity, Bureaux Pusy, an Olmütz prisoner, and at these sounds my heart vibrates with the sentiments of love, gratitude, admiration, which forever bind and devote me to you! How I envy the happiness he is going to enjoy! How I long, my dear and noble friend, to fold you in my arms! Pusy will relate to you the circumstances which hitherto have kept me on this side of the Atlantic—even now the illness of my wife, and the necessity of her having been a few weeks in France before I set out, prevent me from embarking with Pusy and his amiable family. But in the course of the summer I shall look over to you and with inexpressible delight I shall be welcomed by my beloved deliverer. No answer from you has yet come to me. We are expecting every day my friend McHenry's nephew—perhaps I may be blessed with a letter from you!
I need not recommend to you Bureaux Pusy. The conspicuous and honorable part he has acted in the French Revolution, his sufferings during our imprisonment—you but too well know what it is—are sufficient introductions to your great and good heart. He is one of the most accomplished men that can do honour to the country where he is born, and to the country where he wishes to become a citizen. He is my excellent friend. Every service, every mark of affection he can receive from you and your friends, I am happily authorized to depend upon.
My son is gone to Paris. My wife and my two daughters, who love you as a brother, present you with the sincere, grateful expressions of their friendship. The last word George told me at his setting out was not to forget him in my letter to you. He will accompany me to America.
Adieu, my dear Huger, I shall to the last moment of my life be wholly
Yours,
Lafayette.
The wish to revisit the land of his adoption was strong, but many years were to pass before it could be carried out. He was forty years old when he was liberated from Olmütz, and he was sixty-seven when he paid his last visit to our shores.
He little dreamed of the reception he was to find, for the whole American people were waiting to greet, with heart and soul, the man who, in his youth, had taken so noble a part in their struggle for freedom. He reached New York on the 16th of August, 1824. He came with modest expectation of some honorable attentions—nothing more. On the Cadmus he asked a fellow-traveler about the cost of stopping at American hotels and of traveling in steamboats and by stage; of this his secretary, M. Levasseur, made exact note. He came to visit the interesting scenes of his youth and to enjoy a reunion with a few surviving friends and compatriots. Instead, he found a whole country arising with one vast impulse to do him honor. It was not mere formality; it was a burst of whole-souled welcome from an entire nation. So astonished was he, so overcome, to find a great demonstration awaiting him, where he had expected to land quietly and to engage private lodgings, that his eyes overflowed with tears.
The harbor of New York was entered on a Sunday. He was asked to accept a sumptuous entertainment on Staten Island till Monday, when he could be received by the city with more honor. On that day citizens and officers, together with old Revolutionary veterans, attended him. Amid the shouting of two hundred thousand voices he reached the Battery. The band played "See the Conquering Hero Comes," the "Marseillaise," and "Hail, Columbia." Lafayette had never dreamed of such a reception or of such sweeps of applause. The simple-hearted loyalty of the American people had a chance to show itself, and their enthusiasm knew no bounds. Lafayette's face beamed with joy. Four white horses bore him to the City Hall, while his son, George Washington Lafayette, his secretary, M. Levasseur (who wrote an account of the whole journey of 1824), and the official committee followed in carriages. The mayor addressed the city's guest; and Lafayette's reply was the first of many hundred appropriate and graceful speeches made by him during the journey. There were many ceremonies; school children threw garlands of flowers in his way; corner stones were laid by him; squares were renamed for "General Lafayette" (as he assured everybody he preferred to be called by that title), and societies made him and his son honorary members for life.
Hundreds of invitations to visit different cities poured in. The whole country must be traveled over to satisfy the eagerness of a grateful nation. Are republics ungrateful? That can never be said of our own republic after Lafayette's visit to the United States in 1824.
He set out for Boston by way of New Haven, New London, and Providence. All along the way the farmers ran out from the fields, shouting welcomes to the cavalcade, and children stood by the roadside decked with ribbons on which the picture of Lafayette was printed. Always a barouche with four white horses was provided to carry him from point to point. It was not a bit of vanity on the part of Lafayette that he was ever seen behind these steeds of snowy white. President Washington had set the fashion. His fine carriage-horses he caused to be covered with a white paste on Saturday nights and the next morning to be smoothed down till they shone like silver. It was a wonderful sight when that majestic man was driven to church—the prancing horses, the outriders, and all. And when Lafayette came, nothing was too good for him! The towns sent out the whitest horses harnessed to the best coaches procurable,—cream color, canary color, or claret color,—for the hero to be brought into town or sped upon his way departing. Returning to New York by way of the Connecticut River and the Sound, he found again a series of dinners and toasts, as well as a ball held in Castle Garden, the like of which, in splendor and display, had never before been thought of in this New World.