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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 December 2, 1824

Back at Washington, D. C., Lafayette launched visits to Mount Vernon, Woodlawn Plantation, and Arlington House, each now sheltering George Washington’s progeny, all indirect given that he and Martha had no children of their own, the speculation being that Washington was rendered incapable of having children on account of an episode of smallpox early on.

Mount Vernon first.  When Martha Washington died in 1802, George Washington’s nephew and now Supreme Court justice and staunch ally of Chief Justice John Marshall, Bushrod Washington, inherited Mount Vernon.  Lafayette’s son George had been here before:  Adrienne, his mother, in April 1795 at the tail end of the Reign of Terror, dispatched her fifteen-year-old for safe keeping to Mount Vernon where he remained until 1798.  His friends there included Eleanor “Nelly” Parke Custis and her brother George Washington “Washy” Parke Custis, grandchildren and step-grandchildren, respectively, to Martha and George.  Martha and George became guardians when Marha’s last surviving child, Nelly’s and Washy’s father, John Parke “Jacky” Custis, died of “camp fever” at Yorktown.

Next, Woodlawn Plantation, a walk away from Mount Vernon, the home of Eleanor “Nelly” Parke Custis Lewis.  She married Lawrence Lewis in 1799.  Not long before his death on December 14 of epiglottitis, George Washington gave to her Dogue Farm, one of the five farms he owned, as a wedding gift, 2000 acres complete with gristmill and distillery, and a house design by Dr. William Thornton, a physician, and architect of the U. S. Capitol.  Woodlawn House took five years to build, 1800-1805, and still stands at 9000 Richmond Highway, Alexandria. 

From Woodlawn Lafayette and Company went to Arlington House, home of George Washington “Washy” Parke Custis.  Arlington House was built 1803-1818 on land inherited from his father John Parke Custis, and now Arlington National Cemetery.  “Washy’s” daughter Mary Anna Randolph Custis married U.S. Army Lieutenant Robert E. Lee.  It was here at Arlington House Robert E. Lee decided to resign from the U.S. Army and accept command of the Army of Northern Virginia in the Confederate Army.  The place was confiscated for unpaid taxes, returned, and finally bought back by the U.S. government.

Congress opened its session December 6; Lafayette returned to Washington December 8.  The State of the Union address, delivered in person by Presidents Washington and Adams, took on a less tinsel tincture when Thomas Jefferson set precedent by sending his as a written message, an annual ritual uninterrupted until Woodrow Wilson in 1913 saw his own physical presence as a platform for popularity, and reversed the ritual.  Monroe’s missive addressed matters of state, especially The Monroe Doctrine, which had been declared one year before, then pivoted to Lafayette and the success of his triumphal Farewell Tour to America.  He concluded with an invitation to Congress, “to take into consideration the services which he has rendered, the sacrifices he has made, the losses that he has experienced, and to vote a grant in his favor which responds in a manner worthy of the character and the grandeur of the American people.”  Lafayette was broke and Monroe knew it, having been informed by one who knew the burden of financial disaster:  Thomas Jefferson.