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Editor’s Note: This year marks the Bicentennial, 2024-2025, of Lafayette and his farewell tour, “Guest of the Nation”, which took place August 15, 1824-September 7, 1825. To commemorate the occasion, the LaGrange Daily News will be publishing a series of columns by Richard Ingram, a longtime resident of LaGrange and Chair of Friends of Lafayette.

Week of September 23, 1824:

Our heroes expose us:  they flag the virtues we esteem. 

     Lafayette was a hero, is a hero, because he stood for two things many Americans today find wanting in our civic life:  the idea that you can control your destiny, and the idea that the bonds of community have a view to the common good.  Pageantry celebrated, in the person of Lafayette, what Americans believed America was all about.  Lafayette embodied a public philosophy ancient in origin but marbled with fresh American sentiment:  productive work, the sense of ownership it imparts, as the instrument to liberty, equality, and justice.  See Michael Sandel’s “Democracy’s Discontent” for the clear-eyed case. 

Back aboard the “James Kent,” across the Hudson River to New Jersey, the “Garden State,” Lafayette met Governor Isaac Williamson at Paulus Hook.  The entourage waved and greeted their way, like body surfers, to Bergen, Newark, Elizabeth, Rahway, New Brunswick, Princeton and Trenton. 

At Bergen, where he and Washington in August 1780, had lunch under an apple tree near the Van Wagenen House at 298 Academy Street (which has been restored and still stands) Lafayette was presented a cane crafted from a branch of that apple tree, which had been uprooted in a storm September 3, 1821.  The gold knob had an inscription: “Shaded the hero and friend of Washington in 1779.  Presented by the Corporation of Bergen in 1824.”  It was 1780, not 1779; misinformation has a long pedigree.  The cane now resides in the Louvre.

Lafayette arrived at Princeton on September 25, proceeded to Trenton that evening.  Battles at these two hamlets provided two of the few bright spots for Washington during the Revolutionary War.  Washington crossed the Delaware Christmas night, 1776, to make a lightning strike at Princeton.  “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” the stunning 1851 painting by Emanuel Lutze which today occupies a wall of its own in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, portrays that event.  On January 3, 1777, Washington repeated the performance at Trenton.

Princeton is one of the nine original colonial colleges, and today one of the eight Ivy League schools.  Princeton President Carnahan presented Lafayette an honorary Doctor of Laws.  It had been awarded in 1790, signed by then President John Witherspoon, but Lafayette was in France at the time.  Many such honors were to come.

Next morning, Sunday, though not much a church-going man, Lafayette attended service at the Presbyterian Church.  That afternoon he visited Joseph Bonaparte.  Joseph was Napoleon’s older brother.  He and Lafayette were good friends, even though they saw government differently.  When Napoleon abdicated for the second and last time, Joseph emigrated to America.  He settled at Point Breeze, Bordentown.  Once word spread that Lafayette was at Point Breeze, throngs of people came to pay their respects. 

Philadelphia would not be outdone.  Auguste Levasseur, Lafayette’s secretary, estimated a crowd of 120,000, augmented by 40000 visitors.  Bleachers lined the parade route, which was punctuated by thirteen triumphal arches, the grandest of which was the “Grand Civil Arch,” on Chestnut Street, designed by William Strickland, in front of the newly renovated Independence Hall.

Lafayette arrived on September 28th to find 6000 militia lined up to escort him.  Artisans, the “Corps of Trades” they called themselves, teachers, students, and clergy were in the ranks.  Lafayette for hours, untiring, shook hands and exchanged pleasantries.