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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 May 5, 1825

The Farewell Tour

Nashville is named after Francis Nash, a brigadier general in the American Revolutionary War who fought at the Battle of Brandywine, the very one in which Lafayette took a musket ball to his left calf.  Nash died at the Battle of Germantown a month later; a cannonball to his hip and a musket ball to the head gave Dr. James Craik, one of Washington’s personal physicians, no chance to save him. 

The highlight of Lafayette’s three-day stay was his visit to the Hermitage, General Andrew Jackson’s home, just east of Nashville.  Jackson surprised Lafayette when he displayed two ornate pistols and asked if Lafayette recognized them.  Lafayette had given them to George Washington in 1778; Washington carried them at Valley Forge, Monmouth, and Yorktown.  He bequeathed them to his nephew William Augustine Washington, who passed them to his son-in-law William Robinson.  It was Robinson who gave them to Senator Andrew Jackson.  Eventually the Richard King Mellon Foundation purchased them for $1,986,000, and donated them to the Fort Ligonier Museum, near Pittsburgh, where they are displayed today.  Lafayette, incidentally, recognized them instantly.  Jackson, at the time, apparently did not offer to give them back.

George Washington many years back had been given a watch by a Philadelphia watchmaker named Weitzel with instructions to pass it on to a deserving patriot.  Accordingly, Washington presented the watch to Lafayette after the Battle of Yorktown, with the inscription, “G. Washington to Gilbert Mottiers de Lafayette, Lord Cornwallis capitulation (Yorktown) Oct. 17, 1781.”  At Nashville, presumably pickpocketed, the watch was lost and never recovered, at least not by Lafayette.  Fifty years later it was found in a Louisville, Kentucky, pawnshop.  On January 22, 1874, Congress resolved to purchase the watch for $300 and return it to Oscar de Lafayette, son of George Washington Lafayette.  United States Minister to France Elihu Washburn made the presentation in Paris.

Lafayette left Nashville on May 6 aboard the “Mechanic,” descending the Cumberland River; the next day the “Mechanic” turned upstream into the Ohio River.  On May 8, after arriving at Shawneetown where Governor Coles of Illinois left the party, the troupe continued up the Ohio at full speed.  At nearly 11 PM the ship took a jolt; the hull had been pierced by a submerged tree and began taking on water.  Bastien Wagner, Lafayette’s valet, helped him dress and ascend the ten steps to the deck.  It was apparent the ship was sinking; Lafayette climbed into the captain’s long boat, which almost capsized, and was taken to the left bank on the Indiana side, close to the mouth of Deer Creek.  Lafayette was unnerved that his son George was absent, only to find out George was helping with rescue efforts.  John Becica, in his “Trail Tale” says Lafayette saved only “a night bag, a trunk, and about 60 of the 200 letters” he had written.  Lafayette slept on shore, on a mattress snagged out of the river, beside a fire that was challenged by a heavy rain.  Next morning at 9 AM he was rowed to the opposite shore and the cover of an abandoned log cabin.  At about the same time three ships were steaming down river, the “Patriot,” the “Paragon,” and the “Highland Laddie.“  Mr. Neilson, who had been in the party accompanying Lafayette on the “Mechanic,” happened to own the “Paragon,” which had cargo it was taking from Louisville to New Orleans.  Lafayette and company boarded the “Paragon,” at its owner’s insistence.  The “Paragon” reversed course at 11 AM and steamed back to Louisville.  Captain Hall of the “Mechanic” regretted the episode in the extreme; he was consoled by a signed declaration by all the passengers that the wreck in no way reflected on his competence.  The worst of it, Lafayette said later, was the loss of his little dog Quiz.

Two days later, at 3 PM they arrived at Portland, three miles below Louisville.  The “Lafayette Cavalry” gave escort to Louisville where Lafayette was given a reception; a parade; and, finally, a ball at Washington Hall.  He spent the night at Union Hall.

The next day, answering an enthusiastic request, he crossed the river to visit Jeffersonville, Indiana, before returning to Louisville for an afternoon barbecue of bear, which was rained out.  The evening was capped by a gala at the Louisville Theater.