Washington and Lafayette did not forget each other. They wrote devoted letters to each other as if they were father and son. The French nobleman named his son for Washington, who, during the troublous years in France, received and cared for the boy as if he were a grandson.
Nearly fifty years after Lafayette’s first coming to America, he made his fourth voyage to our country, bringing with him his son, George Washington de Lafayette. He came, at the invitation of President Monroe and Congress, as the guest of the United States. Because of the enthusiasm with which he was welcomed all over the country, his visit was remembered as one of the brightest times in the history of the United States.
One hundred and forty years after the Marquis de Lafayette’s first coming to help America, four millions of American young men were enrolled to rescue republican France from her brutal enemy. A million soldiers had crossed the ocean, and another million were on their way when a company of Americans visited the last resting-place of Lafayette. As they laid a wreath upon the tomb of the “Friend of America,” General Pershing, the commander of the American forces, exclaimed, “Lafayette, we are here!”
THE IMMORTAL REPLY OF JOHN PAUL JONES
OF the millions of boys who have had “sea fever,” perhaps none suffered with it more than John Paul, a bright, sandy-haired Scotch lad. His father was a gardener on the estate of a noble lord. John went to school but little, yet he studied hard while he was there. He had learned to sail a boat quite well when he had a chance, at twelve years old, to go to America as a cabin boy. When the owner of the ship soon after failed in business, John Paul entered the Royal Navy as a midshipman. He learned all he could in the short time he was a “middy,” but, as his father was poor, he saw no chance to get ahead there.
He left the navy and found work on a merchant ship running between Scotland and the West Indies. Coming back from a voyage to Jamaica, the ship’s captain and mate both died, and John Paul, though still a mere boy, sailed the ship home. So he became a captain before he was twenty. In those days, shipmasters treated their men roughly, and once young Captain Paul had to flog the ship’s carpenter. The man died some time afterward of fever, and, to spite the young shipmaster, he claimed that he had been fatally injured by John Paul’s cruelty. After that, on another voyage, the sailors mutinied or turned against their captain, and tried to kill him. In self-defense the young master knocked the leader down stairs and he died of the fall.
The next time John Paul was heard from, he was living in America with a wealthy man named Jones. It was just at the beginning of the War for Independence, and the young Scotchman was so in love with liberty and the new country that he decided to become an American. In doing this he took the name of his new-found friend Jones. Instead of John Paul, the British subject, he now called himself Paul Jones, American. He went to the Congress in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, in May, 1775, to offer his services. He was promptly given command of several ships to defend the colonies against Great Britain. The next year the Declaration of Independence was signed. On the 14th of June, 1777, the Congress appointed him to the command of the American ship-of-war, Ranger. On the same day the Congress adopted a flag and made this record:
“Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white, and that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”
Captain Paul Jones had a silk flag made at once and raised it on the Ranger, on the first birthday of the United States, July 4th, 1777. The first voyage of this ship was to France, and the young United States captain announced to the French admiral, in the harbor he was about to enter, that he would expect the French fleet to salute the new American flag. After some delay, the French officer consented and the Ranger sailed into port between two rows of French ships-of-war, which had French flags flying, and French sailors and soldiers manning the yardarms, and cannon booming all along the line, in honor of the Stars and Stripes. That was a great day for the United States, for this was the first time a foreign kingdom recognized the new republic of America.
France not only treated the United States as an equal, but she went to war with England and helped the Americans win their independence. Captain Jones was a little, peppery man, and had been an American only two years, but he was trying to make up for lost time. He believed so much in the people’s right to be free, that he considered being an American citizen the highest honor in the world. He begged the high French officials and Doctor Franklin, who represented the United States in France, to let him take the Ranger out and fight England all by himself. The British had taken American prisoners and treated them as spies and traitors, instead of as prisoners of war. Captain Jones wished to capture some British prisoners and teach the enemy how prisoners of war should be treated.