Recently I finished reading Lafayette by Harlow Giles Unger. Wow! Amazing! Best book ever!
Upon first opening of this book, I quickly found myself in the romantic knighthood mode of old France.
Although I purchased the book in 2008, I wanted lots of quiet time to sink in to the book, so I set it aside…except my life only became busier.
Thankfully, I already knew a lot about Lafayette, so I kept looking for that quiet time…and finally found it when a major snow storm hit last winter.
Escaping the cold and ice, I immersed myself into the land of castles in 18th century France, and a little boy who inherited a fortune at a young age.
Eventually, his passion for liberty for all took him to America, to serve under General George Washington in the American Revolution.
Using his connections to important people, Lafayette helped secure France’s agreement to ally with America to defeat their ancient enemy, Britain.
Meanwhile, Lafayette’s ardor for all things American, especially the concept of republican values and liberty, won for him our hearts.
Wow! Wow! Wow! This is the ultimate book about Lafayette!
I have a more complete picture now of Lafayette’s influence on France to support the American Revolution, details on Lafayette’s Virginia mission that resulted in victory at Yorktown, and the easiest explanation I’ve yet seen of the complications of the French Revolution.
As much as I enjoyed the book, I once again watched him age, eventually slow down, and pass away…which always brings tears to my eyes.
LAFAYETTE EULOGIZED IN CONGRESS
When President Jackson received news of Lafayette’s passing, he arranged for the same honors that George Washingon had been given.
For thirty days, Congress was draped in black…and the public did as well.
In short, Adams spoke to Lafayette: himself, his life, his fortune, his hereditary honors, his towering ambition, his splendid hopes, all to the cause of liberty.
Also moving is the eulogy that John Quincy Adams, known as Old Man Eloquent, delivered to Congress (at their request) on December 31, 1834, ten years after his Grand Tour of America:
But, as in the firmament of heaven that rolls over our heads there is, among the stars of the first magnitude, one so preeminent in splendor as, in the opinion of astronomers, to constitute a class by itself, so in the 1,400 years of the French monarchy, among the multitudes of great and mighty men which it has evolved, the name of Lafayette stands unrivalled in the solitude of glory.
Pronounce him one of the first men of his age, and you have not yet done him justice. Try him by that test by which he sought in vain to stimulate the vulgar and selfish spirit of Napoleon; class him among the men who, to compare and seat themselves, must take in the compass of all ages; turn back your eyes upon the records of time; summon from the creation of the world to this day the mighty dead of every age and every clime —and where, among the race of merely mortal men, shall one be found, who, as the benefactor of his kind, shall claim to take precedence of Lafayette?
There have doubtless been, in all ages, men, whose discoveries or inventions, in the world of matter or of mind, have opened new avenues to the dominion of man over the material creation; have in-creased his means or his faculties of enjoyment; have raised him in nearer approximation to that higher and happier condition, the object of his hopes and aspirations in his present state of existence.
Lafayette discovered no new principles of politics or of morals. He invented nothing in science. He disclosed no new phenomenon in the laws of nature. Born and educated in the highest order of feudal nobility, under the most absolute monarchy of Europe, in possession of an affluent fortune, and master of himself and of all his capabilities, at the moment of attaining manhood, the principle of republican justice and of social equality took possession of his heart and mind, as if inspired from above. He devoted himself, his life, his fortune, his hereditary honors, his towering ambition, his splendid hopes, all to the cause of liberty. He came to another hemisphere to defend her. He became one of the most effective champions of our independence; but, that once achieved, be returned to his own country, and thenceforward took no part in the controversies which have divided us. In the events of our Revolution, and in the forms of policy which we have adopted for the establishment and perpetuation of our freedom, Lafayette found the most perfect form of government. He wished to add nothing to it. He would gladly have abstracted nothing from it. Instead of the imaginary republic of Plato, or the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, he took a practical existing model, in actual operation here, and never attempted or wished more than to apply it faithfully to his own country.
It was not given to Moses to enter the promised land; but he saw it from the summit of Pisgah. It was not given to Lafayette to witness the consummation of his wishes in the establishment of a republic, and the extinction of all hereditary rule in France. His principles were in advance of the age and hemisphere in which he lived. A Bourbon still reigns on the throne of France, and it is not for us to scrutinize the title by which he reigns. The principles of elective and hereditary power, blended in reluctant union in his person, like the red and white roses of York and Lancaster, may postpone to aftertime the last conflict to which they must ultimately come. The life of the patriarch was not long enough for the development of his whole political system. Its final accomplishment is in the womb of time.
The anticipation of this event is the more certain, from the consideration that all the principles for which Lafayette contended were practical. He never indulged himself in wild and fanciful speculations. The principle of hereditary power was, in his opinion, the bane of all republican liberty in Europe. Unable to extinguish it in the revolution of 1830, so far as concerned the chief magistracy of the nation, Lafayette had the satisfaction of seeing it abolished with reference to the peerage. A hereditary crown, stripped of the support which it may derive from an hereditary peerage, however compatible with Asiatic despotism, is an anomaly in the history of the Christian world, and in the theory of free government. There is no argument producible against the existence of an hereditary peerage but applies with aggravated weight against the transmission from sire to son of an hereditary crown. The prejudices and passions of the people of France rejected the principle of inherited power in every station of public trust, excepting the first and highest of them all; but there they clung to it, as did the Israelites of old to the savory deities of Egypt.
Then, too, and then only, will be the time when the character of Lafayette will be appreciated at its true value throughout the civilized world. When the principle of hereditary dominion shall be extinguished in all the institutions of France; when government shall no longer be considered as property transmissible from sire to son, but as a trust committed for a limited time, and then to return to the people whence it came; as a burdensome duty to be discharged and not as a reward to be abused; when a claim, any claim, to political power by inheritance shall, in the estimation of the whole French people, be held as it now is by the whole people of the North American Union-then will be the time for contemplating the character of Lafayette, not merely in the events of his life, but in the full development of his intellectual conceptions, of his fervent aspirations, of the labors and perils and sacrifices of his long and eventful career upon earth; and thenceforward, till the hour when the trump of the archangel shall sound to announce that Time shall be no more, the name of Lafayette shall stand enrolled high on the list of the pure and disinterested benefactors of mankind. –John Quincy Adams, December 31, 1834
For more photos of our Lafayette journey, check my Flickr set.
