200 years ago a key figure of the American Revolution was invited back to the states for a tour complete with parades, dinners and commemorations. The Marquis de Lafayette was a French military officer who fought for the Continental Army, commanding troops during the siege of Yorktown - the final major battle of the Revolutionary War.
During his victorious return, Lafayette visited places such as Albany, Schenectady and Pittsfield, Massachusetts. A letter written by Lafayette during the tour is now in the possession of the Raab Collection. President Nathan Raab recently spoke with WAMC's Jim Levulis.
Raab: The Marquis de Lafayette was an instrumental figure in the freedom movements on both sides of the Atlantic first coming and fighting alongside the colonists against the English during the Revolutionary War, building close friendships with many of the people who fought there, developing a father son type relationship with George Washington. And then after the war, going back and getting wrapped up in what was going on in France at the time, the French Revolution and the tumult that was taking place in his home country, and then continuing to support the freedom and independence movements in other European countries, Italy, for example.
Levulis: And now to this letter that Lafayette wrote in June 1825. He had been traveling throughout the 24 U.S. states at the time over the previous months, what was the purpose of his travels during the time period?
Well, you got to think what was going on in the country at this time, it was a period of, of relative peace. But the victors, the men and the women who fought during the Revolutionary War, were beginning to pass away. And with them a lot of the firsthand memories and so our countrymen began to really think of themselves as having a history worth telling. And you have this sort of movement towards history preservation, creation, praise of the winners in the Revolutionary War, the soldiers, the generals, and it was in that vein that Lafayette was invited back to where he fought during the Revolutionary War. He was given an invitation to come to the United States, which he accepted. And he came back on kind of a triumphal return tour, visited the various states, visited his friends from the war. And in each location, he was feted, there were parades, great celebrations, speeches, feasts, must have been quite something to see. And he went from state to state and a lot of the big cities, and went into parts of the country that were fairly sparsely populated back then, included what was then sort of the Old West, in and around St. Louis. So Lafayette comes back in to 1824 and tours, goes to the White House, goes down, goes down to south into Virginia, and kind of settles into his winter quarters in around Washington, DC. And then after that in 1925 he continues his tour farther south to the west, and then up there through New York and Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.
Yeah, I found it interesting in looking at the places he stopped; places like Albany, Troy, Schenectady, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, even, pretty interesting. You know, it wasn't just Boston, it wasn't just Washington, DC, it wasn't just New York City.
And why he chose those various locations, it may have had something to do with who invited him, and whether he had friends in those areas. But yes, it was something of an unconventional tour. But you know, he made it through much, much of the country. But you know what we think of today as the great big cities and you know, we have the images of these cities in our head heads today, it might not have been the same for them back then.
And now looking at this letter, it was written to Edward Livingston. Who was Edward Livingston, and what was his relationship with Lafayette?
Livingston came from a prominent family. He was the younger brother of Robert Livingston who famously negotiated the Louisiana Purchase. He was a lawyer, he served in Congress, he was Secretary of State, himself was Minister to France, was also the mayor of New York City. The Livingston name is a prominent New York state name and they had a strong presence in and around Albany in that portion of New York, but he was a close friend of Lafayette. In fact, one of the things I learned in researching this letter is that he refers to Lafayette in his correspondence as “my dear Edward.” And it's another clue, you know, when you're looking through this letter, and you see well, it's in French, to an Edward spelled the English way so, you know, an Englishman or an American but yet in French, the Livingston family they all spoke French.
And to the particulars of the letter, anything else stand out to you that was, you know, remarkable, notable beyond who wrote it and who received it?
Well, for me piecing together, this letter was something of a puzzle. Because it doesn't say on the face of the letter, who it's to. And there's no date on the letter. So the letter itself was filled with clues, which pointed not only to the recipient, but to the date, the identification of the various people in the letter, the reference to his tour of the military parade, the officers who would go in with him. So at the end of sort of diving into this letter, translating the letter and diving into it, you are left with this exciting date and connection, not only to Edward Livingston, but a letter written during this great tour from back in the United States in 1825, sort of towards the end of the tour. It's exciting to find something that was written from the tour that still survives in the United States. And sort of a powerful memory of that great moment in American history.
And 200 years on after it was written, how did the collection come by this letter?
We acquired it from a private collector. And I confess, because it wasn't clearly addressed anybody or dated. It sat on the backburner for a while. So we've had it for gosh, we've probably had it for close to a year without realizing exactly what we had. And then only kind of uncovering the identity of the letter, the recipient, the date, just recently.
Wow, that's incredible. Does that often happen?
No, it's not very common. Typically documents speak pretty loudly for themselves. You'll have a date and the recipient on there, it's fairly straightforward what a piece is. So to find something where, you know, the identity of the document is hidden and requires detective work is not terribly common. And it's certainly not common for us to sit on a description of a document for, you know, close to a year and then find out that it’s actually something quite exciting.
