INGRAM COLUMN: Lafayette the Nation’s Guest
Published 9:00 am Friday, January 31, 2025
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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 January 27, 1825
Sometimes, even in works of fiction and even though you’re not looking for it, a phrase can take a turn to Lafayette. I was reading, for the second time, Allen Levi’s novel, “Theo of Golden,” which Mark McIntosh, newly arrived in LaGrange, recommended as a five-star read, and with which I concur. One Sunday morning Theo, the main character, sat observant in St. James, eighth pew from the front: “The architecture of the place inside and out was a celebration of lines and angles, of stones and wood and glass, of mundane materials used majestically in celebration of order and mystery.” The turn of phrase, “of mundane materials used majestically,” tracks the arc of Lafayette’s life. He was not the smartest nor the most talented, but he saw his purpose and persevered in it. Such a life is, to quote Levi again, “a manifesto of beauty.” There is grandeur in it.
Lafayette received, and accepted, invitations to visit all the states in the South and the West. The invitations came from cities, towns, and state legislatures. He had agreed to be in Boston on June 17th to commemorate the Jubilee of the Battle of Bunker Hill, and to lay the cornerstone for the Bunker Hill Monument. His itinerary would cover three thousand miles in less than four months. Lafayette’s son George oversaw planning; to plot the safest route he enlisted the help of Brigadier General Simon Bernard, Napoleon’s aide-de-camp who emigrated to the United States after the Battle of Waterloo, joined the United States Army and engineered construction of seaboard defenses; and Postmaster General John McClean, who later became a Supreme Court Justice and one of the two dissenters in “Dred Scott vs. Sandford.”
During his time in Washington, Lafayette’s name was linked to Simon Bolivar. At one reception Henry clay proposed a toast to the health of “the Liberator Bolivar, the Washington of South America.” Levasseur observed that the name of Lafayette was being similarly and simultaneously lauded in Caracas. Interestingly, Bolivar was in Paris, renting a room on Rue Vivienne, on May 18, 1804, when Napoleon became Emperor of the French. In April of the following year, he left Paris to tour Italy, returned by April 1806, and had by that time committed to the idea of ending Spanish rule in South America. Before returning to Venezuela in 1807, Bolivar spent six months in the United States. Although Lafayette and he would later communicate by letter, I found no evidence they met.
Lafayette had boarded the steamboat “Petersburg” at Richmond, and arrived at Baltimore on January 28, 1825, where he slept at the Fountain Inn. He left Baltimore the following day by stage, arriving at York, Pennsylvania, at 9 PM. His militia escort protested the possibility of a John Quincy Adams presidency: “Jackson! Give us Jackson! To the Capitol! Our bayonets will give us justice!” Menacing talk, but nothing came of it. Lafayette slept at McGrath’s Hotel, departed early the next morning to Middletown, then to the capital at Harrisburg where he stayed at the residence of Governor Shulze. On January 31st he had a reception at the state capitol followed by a reception at the executive mansion. The next day yet another reception at the State House hosted by the legislature; then, a legislative banquet at Matthew Wilson’s Inn on Walnut Street.
On February 2nd Lafayette left Harrisburg and returned to York, where he arrived at McGrath’s Hotel at 4 PM; a reception and banquet followed. York had been the capital and host of the Second Continental Congress from September 30, 1777, through June 27, 1778. The Articles of Confederation were drafted here. Technically, York was the fourth capital of the United States, after Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Lancaster (for one day). It is also where the “Conway Cabal” hatched, in which instigators promoted the idea of replacing George Washington as commander-in-chief with General Horatio Gates. The bumbling initiative began at the Golden Plough Tavern, which interestingly is connected by its kitchen to the home of General Horatio Gates himself. Lafayette played a role in dismantling the Cabal.
After reviewing its militia, Lafayette left York and arrived back at Baltimore on February 3rd at 11 PM.