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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 February 17, 1825

The Farewell Tour

Lafayette’s Farewell Tour had four chapters:

August 15-October 11, 1824:  Arrival in New York; New England; Middle States.

October 12, 1824-February 22, 1825:  Washington, D.C.; Virginia.

February 23-June 14, 1825:  Southern and Western States (Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, and what is now West Virginia).

June 15-September 8, 1825:  Massachusetts, back down to Washington, D.C.

He didn’t show up uninvited.  State legislatures dispatched formal invitations, like the one from the General Assembly of South Carolina: “Resolved, therefore, that the legislature, now in session, do renew the invitation already tendered by the Governor to General La Fayette, that he would honor this state with his welcome presence.  That he be received throughout our borders with the honors that were paid to the immortal Washington;  and that the Executive, in conjunction with such Municipal authorities as may be disposed to cooperate with him, do provide for his reception and residence while among us, in a manner worthy of his great merits, in accordance with the dignity and in unison with the feelings of this state.”

George Washington Lafayette did the planning, assisted by General Simon Bernard, Postmaster General McLean, and the representatives to Congress of the various states Lafayette was invited to visit.  Besides Lafayette and his son George, the core travelers consisted of Levasseur, his secretary; Bastien, his valet; and “Quiz,” his little dog.  The group expanded and contracted along the way as friends and well-wishers attached and detached themselves from the troupe.

They had originally planned to depart on the Southern and Western leg of the tour in March, with the coming of spring thaw; but the deadline of June 17, when Lafayette agreed to lay the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument in Boston, obligated a prompt departure.  One newspaper calculated that this journey would take ninety-nine days and cover 5286 miles, 2610 by water and 2676 by land. 

Early in the week Lafayette was a guest at a meeting of the American Colonization Society.  Formed on December 21, 1816, at the Davis Hotel, Washington, D.C., with Presbyterian minister Robert Finley as president, it encouraged Free Blacks of Color to emigrate to Liberia; this copied Britain’s Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor which promoted emigration to Sierra Leone.  Proponents argued that freedom and upward mobility were more likely for Free Blacks in Liberia.  Things did not go well for the 15000 who did migrate; they saw themselves as culturally and intellectually superior to indigenous tribes, and acrimony was inevitable.  Liberia declared its independence in 1847; Britain was the first country to recognize it as an independent state.  Nothing more came of the ACS, although it lingered until 1964.  Robert Finley, interestingly, after serving as president of the ACS, became the fourth president of the University of Georgia; he got sick, died three months after arriving at Athens, buried there, in Jackson Street Cemetery.

Lafayette attended a Masonic dinner at nearby Alexandria, and on the following day February 22nd, in honor of Washington’s birthday, reviewed the militia early in the day followed by a Grand Ball in the company of President Monroe (after whom the capital of Liberia, Monrovia, is named) and President-elect John Quincy Adams.

On February 23rd at 9 AM Lafayette and company boarded the steamboat “Potomac,” headed down river into the Chesapeake and on to Norfolk, Virginia.  A letter to Thomas Jefferson opened with, “On Board the Potowmack Steam Boat,” and went on to outline  his plans to return to Monticello for one last visit at the end of his tour.