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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 June 16, 1825

“These people show a spirit and conduct against us they never showed against the French,” said General Thomas Gage, commander-in-chief of British forces in North America after the Battle of Bunker Hill, and General Clinton, who led the third and finally victorious assault on Breed’s Hill where most fighting took place, famously quipped, “ A dear bought victory, another such would have ruined us.”  June 17, 1775, proved Americans, “untrained rabble” as General Burgoyne called them, could hold their own against vaunted British regulars.

The Bunker Hill Monument today is a 221-foot obelisk atop Breed’s Hill, 700 yards from Bunker Hill, and 294 steps to its peak.  Lafayette laid its cornerstone on June 17, 1825, the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill and four days past the 48th Anniversary of Lafayette’s arrival in America aboard “La Victoire.”  He proceeded that morning to the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts where he would join 2000 Freemasons and march to the capitol to meet sixteen companies of voluntary infantry, a corps of cavalry, and civilian paraders, a crowd of 7000.  They stepped off toward the hole that would be the site of the monument at 10:30 AM and arrived at Breed’s Hill at 12:30.  A wood monument had been erected initially to commemorate the site; this had been taken down, a piece of the wood frame fashioned into a cane and presented by the Charlestown Masons to Lafayette.

Levasseur estimated 200,000 spectators.  Once Lafayette laid the cornerstone, the Grandmaster John Abbot scattered corn, wine, and oil on the stone, as dictated by the Masonic Order.  Daniel Webster followed as orator of the day, extolling the national character, popular government, and the courage of Lafayette; fifteen printed pages of oratory for which the crowd was perfectly placid save moments calling for raucous cheers. 

Levasseur made two striking observations on the occasion.  First, how even the children knew about the campaigns of the War for Independence, and with “astonishing accuracy.”  Second, not only were Americans free and happy, “but they appreciated this freedom and happiness.”

During his stay in Boston Lafayette received invitations, which he accepted, to visit Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.  New York City wanted him for July 4th.

The ensuing three days were given over to visitation.  Lafayette and Mayor Quincy paid a farewell visit to John Adams, whose frailty did not permit him to attend Bunker Hill.

Sunday, Lafayette attended services at the Brattle Street Congregational Church and the Episcopal Trinity Church.  That afternoon he and Mayor Quincy visited Thomas Handasyd Perkins, a wealthy Boston Brahmin merchant, after whom the Perkins School for the Blind is named (one of its graduates, Anne Sullivan, would become a lifelong companion and teacher to Helen Keller), and whose philanthropy helped found the Boston Museum of Fine Art and the Massachusetts General Hospital.  There is a backstory:  in 1795 President James Monroe asked Colonel Perkins and James Russell, both of Boston, to escort Lafayette’s son, George Washington Lafayette, to America for safe harbor, away from the threats of the French Reign of Terror.  Colonel Perkins paid for the trans-Atlantic fares.  Adrienne made the request; Lafayette himself at the time was in prison at Olmutz.  George arrived aboard the “Clio” in August 1795, with his tutor Felix Frestel, staying first with Mr. Russell at his home on Franklin Place; then with Colonel Perkins in his townhouse on Federal Street; then with Alexander Hamilton, and finally with George Washington, first at Philadelphia, and finally at Mount Vernon.  George, the son, returned to France in 1798.

June 19th Lafayette attended a banquet sponsored by the Massachusetts Mechanics Association at the Marlboro Hotel, and that evening at the Boston Theater he saw a production of “Charles II.”

At breakfast the next morning with Senator Lloyd Lafayette made his one lament:  “I have but one thing to regret in all my travels and that is the loss of my little dog [Quiz] who loved me so much.”  The dog was lost when the “Mechanic” sank on the Ohio River.

He left Boston at 9 AM to honor commitments in New Hampshire and Maine.  His carriage averaging eleven miles an hour, through Charlestown to Reading, where he had a lunch and reception at Skinner’s Hotel; through Andover to Pembroke, New Hampshire, where a spectacular sunset greeted him at Fiske’s Hotel.  Next day to the capitol at Concord and greetings by Governor Morrill, a reception at the State House, and an oratorio that evening.  He left Concord at 7 AM, through Durham to Dover where he spent the night at the mansion of William Hale, merchant, ship-owner and former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Hampshire.