Lafayette in the Somewhat United States: Pages 1-59 Summary & Analysis

Author Sarah Vowell introduces her hero, the Marquis de Lafayette, a wealthy French teenager who traveled to Philadelphia in 1777, at the start of the American Revolution. General George Washington hired Lafayette to work in the Patriot army in part because the young aristocrat was willing to work for free—and in part because Washington thought that working with a well-connected Frenchman would encourage Louis XVI, King of France, to bankroll the Americans’ war. Though the Patriots were fighting against British taxation, they hypocritically had no problem with Louis XVI, who taxed his subjects at even higher rates.

Lafayette was only 19 when he joined the American forces. But Vowell points out that the new United States’ founders made lots of terrible decisions, including the electoral college and the three-fifths compromise around slavery. Ultimately, though Lafayette made plenty of reckless decisions, his eagerness to help proved immensely useful in the war. As Vowell puts it, it might have been the “the last time in history a Frenchman shirked rest and relaxation to get back to work.”  

In 1824, years after Americans had won the war and established their own government, Lafayette returned for a tour across the U.S. The former general was greeted as a celebrity everywhere he went: thousands of people flocked to see him in Philadelphia and New York, and artisans cranked out commemorative souvenirs of his visits. This trip through America was especially important for Lafayette because, soon after the Americans won independence, he had seen revolution fail in his own country. 

One of the stops on Lafayette’s 1824 tour was Albany, where he visited Colonel Peter Gansevoort. In the Revolution, Gansevoort had helped the Americans win the Battle of Saratoga, a victory that then convinced the French to back the new U.S. government. Gansevoort passed on his admiration of Lafayette to his nephew Herman Melville, who would go on to write the classic novel Moby-Dick. No matter where he went, Vowell explains, Lafayette seemed to stir up this “delirium of feeling,” gaining American citizens’ love and admiration.

Though Americans of all stripes appreciated Lafayette, 1824 was not an easy time politically for the U.S. Andrew Jackson had just won the popular vote, but the electoral college had instead selected John Quincy Adams as president, prompting popular outrage. Plus, more and more members of the Revolutionary generation were dying off—Adams and Jackson were the first two presidential candidates not to have fought in the war. The American people were nostalgic for the founders. And Lafayette was nostalgic, too: when he visited Thomas Jefferson at Monticello in Virginia, both men wept.

Lafayette’s journey was also a boon to the growing newspaper industry. In 1824, printing presses were considered essential to the preservation of American freedom; in the pages of newspapers, citizens could debate and criticize policies without ever coming to violence. Just as Andrew Jackson made a show of peacefully congratulating rival John Quincy Adams on the presidency, anti-Adams Americans were able to turn to the press (and not the bayonet) to vent their grievances.

Still, as Vowell points out, conflict has always been a part of U.S. political life. Lafayette’s warm welcome “cannot be written off as the product of a simpler, more agreeable time” because “there was no simpler, more agreeable time.” For example, after John Adams began the First Continental Congress with a simple ceremonial prayer, Americans of different faiths immediately began to squabble about whether or not such a prayer was appropriate. Thus, even as the various colonies tried to rally against the British, they were always plagued by intense infighting.

On a tour of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, Vowell reflects on the various conflicts that defined the Constitutional Convention. The founders could not agree on how long presidents should serve, or on how to deal with the issue of slavery in a country that claimed to fight for freedom. Eventually, 39 out of the 55 delegates signed the Constitution, though many retained their doubts. The tour guide in Independence Hall shows Vowell George Washington’s chair, which had a sun carved into the back of it. After the Constitution was signed, a newly optimistic Washington declared that “now…I have the happiness to know it is a rising, and not a setting sun.”

Vowell is skeptical of this optimism, especially because she is researching this book in 2013, when Republican Senator Ted Cruz has shut down the federal government in protest of the Democrats’ Affordable Care Act. This political deadlock, Vowell points out, is also nothing new. In fact, she suggests that rather than Washington’s sunny chair, a more appropriate symbol for democracy might be one of Jefferson’s chairs—namely, one he crossed the room to sit in as a gesture of good will during a particularly heated policy debate. To Vowell, Jefferson’s chair demonstrates the “amount of respect, affection, and wishy-washy give and take needed to keep a house divided in reasonable repair.”

The government shutdown worries Vowell for another reason: as long as U.S. employees are furloughed, many of the historical monuments Vowell has planned to visit for her research will remain closed. Fortunately, Congress is able to reopen the government just in time for Vowell to revisit Yorktown, the site of the Americans’ most crucial victory. Alongside her sister and her pre-teen nephew, Vowell is able to witness Yorktown Day, in which French citizens celebrate the French contribution to the American Revolution’s success.

The French were not so lucky with their own revolutionary efforts. Though at first, the French Revolution of 1789 seemed guided by high-minded, democratic principles, the violence quickly escalated beyond the point of reason. As more and more French aristocrats were guillotined, moderate revolutionaries like Lafayette had to flee to protect themselves. When Vowell visits Jefferson’s Monticello, she asks British historian Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy about why the French failed where the Americans succeeded. O’Shaughnessy explains that while pre-war Americans had been able to practice small forms of democratic governance in town halls and colonial legislatures, the French had had no such options prior to their revolutionary efforts.

Most of all, though, O’Shaughnessy argues that Americans got so good at political debate because they really “enjoyed it.” From the fiery rhetoric used in early revolutionary debates to the backroom deals that eventually ended the 2013 government shutdown, American politics has always worked best when leaders know when to argue and when to compromise. Indeed, after only five months in the U.S., even Lafayette realized that total agreement would be nearly impossible. From the very beginning, the country was plagued by the “fatal tendency of disunion.” 

No matter what, though, Lafayette was always loyal to George Washington. Even at the beginning of the war, when many political leaders doubted him—and when many generals tried to usurp his power—Lafayette believed in the future president. And similarly, Vowell admits that she was drawn to Lafayette because he is one of the very few people that seems to inspire admiration and faith in Americans across ideologies.

Though Lafayette wanted to fight in America for many reasons (boredom and a thirst for fame among them), his main motivation was his grudge against the British. After a humiliating military loss to the British in 1763, most Frenchmen wanted to get back at their rivals. But Lafayette was especially angry because the British army had killed his father in combat. Though Lafayette was born and raised in the sleepy, rural French province of Auvergne, he felt that his destiny was on a far-away battlefield, where he could avenge his father and grandfather’s deaths.

Vowell visits Auvergne, where she is charmed to experience an “old-fangled French time warp.” She learns that in Lafayette’s childhood, the town was stalked by the mythical Beast of Gévaudan. Eight-year-old Lafayette, always up for “glorious deeds,” was constantly trying to kill the monster. The locals also take Vowell on a tour of Lafayette’s childhood home. While there, Vowell recalls that Lafayette’s mother died when the boy was only 12, leaving him “the richest orphan in France.”

Having lost both his parents before he became a teenager, Lafayette was always in search of a family—and though he hoped to find one through military service, he got one through marriage. By the time he was 15, however, he was paired up with Adrienne, the daughter of the powerful French noble Jean de Noailles. The marriage cemented both Lafayette and Adrienne as important French royals, though the new French queen Marie-Antoinette famously laughed at Lafayette out of court when she noticed his poor dancing skills.

Lafayette was supposed to serve his father-in-law’s cavalry unit in Provence, but that seemed boring, so the rebellious teenager quickly got himself fired (as he put it, “I did not hesitate to preserve my independence”). Instead, soon after getting Adrienne pregnant, Lafayette joined the mysterious Freemason society, where he heard news that the American Revolution had begun. Right away, Lafayette knew what he wanted to do: cross the Atlantic and fight for this new country’s independence.

Masonic societies were important breeding grounds for democratic thought on both sides of the ocean. In the colonies, both Washington and Benjamin Franklin were Masons. In France, important Enlightenment philosophers developed their theories of government and human rights over dinner with their Masonic colleagues. Lafayette loved this brotherhood, in part because it provided the surrogate family he so desperately craved. But he was also drawn to the exchange of ideas—in particular, Lafayette embraced the abolition of slavery as essential. A few years later, motivated by his Masonic colleagues, he bought a planation in French Guinea and emancipated the enslaved people who lived on it.

While Lafayette was planning to abandon his family in France, Silas Deane, a politician in Connecticut, was set on doing the same thing to his wife and child in America. Whereas Lafayette hoped to fight in the colonies, Deane wanted to serve as an American ambassador in France. In particular, Deane’s mission abroad was two-fold: he needed to recruit French fighters and to convince the French government to fund the revolutionary war effort.

Since the French had just lost a war to the British, they did not have the excess money necessary to support the American rebels. But the French hatred for the British—best embodied by the French foreign minister, the Count de Vergennes—was so deep that the French got involved anyway. Vergennes hired Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, a popular playwright, to spy on various British officials in preparation for conflict. Beaumarchais then befriended prominent American rebels, including the Virginia-born Arthur Lee. After hearing Lee and others describe their passion for the war efforts, Beaumarchais was so hooked on the idea of the revolution that he wrote directly to King Louis XVI, advising that France should smuggle weapons into America.

Before Vergennes committed to involving France in the war, however, he sent a fact-finder to America with the express purpose of finding out just how serious the Patriots really were. The answer was complicated: fighting had already begun at Lexington and Concord (in Massachusetts), but many politicians were still hoping that King George III would put an end to parliamentary taxation. In fact, Thomas Jefferson even wrote directly to the British king (what is now known as the Olive Branch Petition), asking him to intervene on the colonists’ behalf.

This confusing effort to establish a last-ditch relationship with the monarchy ultimately did nothing but embarrass the Patriots. It also led to conflict between Pennsylvania Quaker John Dickinson, who wanted to avoid violence at all costs, and future president John Adams, who thought this degree of moderation was foolish.

After the failure of the Olive Branch Petition, Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, cementing the Americans’ willingness to go to war. (Interestingly, that Declaration, written by a slave-holder, contains the famous phrase “all men are created equal”). There would be no more Patriot compromises. So, by the time he returned home to France, Vergennes’s fact-finder could report that Americans were dead set on going to war. In fact, they were so committed that despite being understaffed and underfunded, Vergennes believed their passion might just fuel them to victory.

In a letter to Louis XVI, Vergennes suggested that the French should send secret aid to the Patriots, so as to avoid starting an overt war with Britain. Ultimately, Vowell argues that Vergennes’ decision to push for aid was just as important to American independence as Jefferson’s Declaration. But Vowell also calls attention to the argument made by France’s finance minister, Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot. Turgot believed that the colonies were right to want freedom, but he also believed that independence was “inevitable”—and that France should avoid the financial strain of giving the Patriots arms. Vergennes won the debate in the moment, but Turgot was right. The money Louis XVI sent to the U.S. caused even greater poverty in France, prompting the revolts that would eventually lead to Louis’s downfall and death.

With Beaumarchais’s help, Vergennes created a plan to secretly send aid to the Americans, through Silas Deane. Even as the French began to stockpile weapons, however, the British were faster. Thousands of Redcoats came over in ships and attacked the Patriots at a series of battles across New York (which would remain under English control for the rest of the Revolution).