He planned to return to America to rejoin the army. “In spite of all my happiness here,” he wrote to Washington, “I cannot help wishing, ten times a day, to be on the other side of the Atlantic.” But the Continental army was merely marking time, no active campaign was in progress, and neither Lafayette nor French troops were again needed to fight across the ocean.
The negotiations for peace were long drawn out, and in the autumn of 1782 France and Spain again planned a joint expedition against the English in America. A strong fleet of sixty battle-ships and an army of twenty-four thousand men were gathered with the purpose of sailing from the Spanish port of Cadiz to capture the English island of Jamaica and attack New York and Canada. Lafayette was made chief of staff of the combined expedition, and, wearing the uniform of an American general, he set sail from Brest early in December for Cadiz. But the grand fleet was still in port when a courier arrived with news that a treaty of peace had just been signed in Paris. So the fleet did not sail. A protocol, or provisional treaty, was drawn up, and on September 3, 1783, the final treaty was signed, by which Great Britain acknowledged the independence of the United States.
As soon as he heard the good news, Lafayette borrowed a ship, appropriately named the Triumph, and sent it off to Philadelphia with the earliest word of peace. And by the same ship he despatched a letter to Washington. “As for you, my dear general,” he wrote, “who can truly say that all this is your work, what must be the feelings of your good and virtuous heart in this happy moment! The eternal honor in which my descendants will glory, will be to have had an ancestor among your soldiers, to know that he had the good fortune of being a friend of your heart. To the eldest of them I bequeath, as long as my posterity shall endure, the favor that you have conferred upon my son George, by allowing him to bear your name.”
To Vergennes Lafayette wrote, “My great affair is settled; America is sure of her independence; humanity has gained its cause, and liberty will never be without a refuge.”
From Cadiz the Marquis went to Madrid, where he straightened out affairs between the United States and the court of Spain. Then he went back to Paris, made several visits to his old castle and estates in Auvergne, and helped Franklin and Adams and John Jay in putting the affairs of the new republic on a satisfactory footing.
He wanted greatly to see that young republic, now that war was over and peace had come, and at last his wish was gratified. Washington had written him frequently, urging the Marquis to visit him, and had begged Madame de Lafayette to come with her husband. “Come then, let me entreat you,” Washington wrote to Adrienne. “Call my cottage your own; for your own doors do not open to you with more readiness than would mine. You will see the plain manner in which we live, and meet with rustic civility; and you will taste the simplicity of rural life. It will diversify the scene, and may give you a higher relish for the gayeties of the court when you return to Versailles.”
Adrienne de Lafayette, however, was as much of a home-lover as George Washington. Versailles had never attracted her, and she liked to spend most of her time at the castle of Chavaniac. The voyage across the Atlantic was a long and trying experience in those days and so she answered that she preferred to stay in France. She also sent Washington a letter from her little daughter, born while her husband was in camp in America.
Lafayette sailed from Havre on July 1, 1784, and reached New York, which he had never yet seen, on August fourth. Throngs, eager to sing his praises, met him at the harbor, and followed him everywhere on his travels. From New York he went to Philadelphia, and then to Richmond, where Washington met him. He visited the scenes of his great Virginia campaign at Williamsburg and Yorktown, and spent two happy weeks with his beloved friend George Washington at the latter’s home at Mount Vernon. From there he went north again, to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. Up the broad Hudson he traveled to Albany, where he went with American commissioners to a council with dissatisfied Mohawk chiefs. And to the sons of primitive America the young Frenchman, lover of liberty everywhere, spoke so appealingly that he quickly won them away from their enmity for their white neighbors. “Father,” said the Mohawk chief, “we have heard thy voice and we rejoice that thou hast visited thy children to give to them good and necessary advice. Thou hast said that we have done wrong in opening our ears to wicked men, and closing our hearts to thy counsels. Father, it is all true; we have left the good path; we have wandered away from it and have been enveloped in a black cloud. We have now returned that thou mayest find in us good and faithful children. We rejoice to hear thy voice among us. It seems that the Great Spirit had directed thy footsteps to this council of friendship to smoke the calumet of peace and fellowship with thy long-lost children.”
Indeed it did seem that the Great Spirit directed the steps of this man to the places where he was the most needed.
From Albany Lafayette went across country to Boston, where he was given a great reception and banquet in Faneuil Hall. A portrait of Washington was unveiled behind the Marquis at the table, and he sprang to his feet and led in the burst of cheers that followed. Through New England he went as far as Portsmouth in New Hampshire, and then turned south to make a second visit to Mount Vernon. Everywhere he went he was received as the man whom the United States especially desired to honor. Unquestionably he deserved all the praise and gratitude that was showered upon him, for he had left his wife, his home, his friends, his fortune, and had come to America in one of the darkest hours of her fight for independence, and by his confidence in her cause had done much to help her win her victory. He had brought French troops and money, but most of all he had brought that unselfish devotion which had so heartened the people. The United States did not forget what it owed to Lafayette in 1784, it has never forgotten it; the republic of the Western World has shown that it has a long and faithful memory.