Only one mishap occurred during the many journeys which might easily have proved full of perils. While ascending the Ohio River on his way to Louisville his steamer struck on a snag on a dark and rainy night. The boat immediately began to fill. Lafayette was hurried into a small boat and rowed ashore, in spite of his protests that he would not leave the steamer until he secured a snuff-box that Washington had given him. His secretary went below and got the snuff-box and his son George saved some other articles of value. All the party were safely landed, but they had to spend some hours on the river-bank with no protection from the rain and only a few crackers to eat. The next morning a freight steamer took them off and they proceeded on their journey.
When he was in Washington Lafayette made a visit to Mount Vernon, and spent some time in the beautiful house and grounds where he had once walked with the man whose friendship had been so dear to him. Like Washington, almost all the men of the Revolution had departed. The Frenchman found few of the soldiers and statesmen he had known then. One, however, Colonel Nicholas Fish, who had been with him at the storming of the redoubt at Yorktown, welcomed him in New York and went with him up the Hudson. “Nick,” said Lafayette, pointing out a certain height to Colonel Fish, “do you remember when we used to ride down that hill with the Newburgh girls on an ox-sled?” Many places along the Hudson served to remind him of incidents of the time when Washington had made his headquarters there.
In New York the Frenchman visited the widow of General Montgomery and Mrs. Alexander Hamilton. He found some old friends in Philadelphia and Baltimore. In Boston he saw again the venerable John Adams, who had been the second President of the country. He went to Thomas Jefferson’s home of Monticello in Virginia, and passed some days with the man whom he revered almost as much as he did Washington. With Jefferson he talked over the lessons that were to be learned from the French Revolution and the career of Napoleon. And he met foreigners in the United States who called to mind the recent eventful days in his own land. He visited Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother, at Bordentown in New Jersey. At Baltimore he found Dubois Martin, the man who as secretary to the Duke de Broglie had helped Lafayette to secure the ship in which he had first sailed to America. And at Savannah he discovered Achille Murat, the son of Joachim, the ex-king of Naples, one of the men Napoleon had placed upon a temporary throne, and learned that Murat was now cultivating an orange-orchard in Florida.
A man named Haguy came one hundred and fifty miles to see the General, and proved to be one of the sailors who had crossed on the Victory with him and had later fought under him in the Continental Army. Here and there he found veterans of his campaign in Virginia, and Lafayette was as glad to see his old soldiers as they were to welcome him.
Before he left for Europe John Quincy Adams, the son of the second President, was elected to succeed Monroe. The new President invited Lafayette to dine at the White House in company with the three ex-Presidents Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, all of them old and trusted friends of the Frenchman. What a dinner that must have been, with five such men at the table!
Perhaps the thing that delighted him most in America was the self-reliant independence that marked the people everywhere. This type of democracy was most inspiring to a man who had seen the constant turmoil and bickerings of the Revolution and Napoleonic era in France. America was young and her citizens were too busy developing their country to pay much attention to class distinctions or the social ambitions that were so prominent in Europe. They felt quite able to run their government to suit themselves, and it seemed to Lafayette that they were working out their problems in a most satisfactory manner.
In 1824 he witnessed a Presidential election with four candidates, Adams, Jackson, Clay, and Crawford. Party feelings ran high, and there was great excitement. But when the election was over the people settled down to their work again in remarkable harmony and the government continued its course serenely. This Lafayette, with his knowledge of other countries, regarded as evidence of a most unusual genius for self-control in the American nation.
All parties, all classes of men, praised and venerated him as they praised and venerated the founders of their republic. His tour was a tremendous popular success, the greatest reception ever given to a guest by the United States. It must have made up to him for the many disappointments of his career in France. And when he sailed for home he knew that the country to which he had given all he had in youth would never cease to love and honor him.
President John Quincy Adams at the White House, standing beside Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, said to Lafayette, “You are ours, sir, by that unshaken sentiment of gratitude for your services which is a precious portion of our inheritance; ours by that tie of love, stronger than death, which has linked your name for the endless ages of time with the name of Washington. At the painful moment of parting with you we take comfort in the thought that, wherever you may be, to the last pulsation of your heart, our country will ever be present to your affections. And a cheering consolation assures us that we are not called to sorrow,—most of all that we shall see your face no more,—for we shall indulge the pleasing anticipation of beholding our friend again. In the name of the whole people of the United States, I bid you a reluctant and affectionate farewell.”
An American frigate, named the Brandywine, in compliment to Lafayette’s first blow for liberty in America, carried the guest of the nation back to France. And the memory of that visit, and of what it stood for, has been kept green in American history ever since.