Lafayette in the Somewhat United States: Pages 126-190 Summary & Analysis

That folksiness was not enough to shield Franklin from the news that the Patriots were about to lose Philadelphia to the Redcoats. Though the city was not very important strategically to the Americans, it acted as a political hub, and it was therefore a crucial symbol of independence. Washington, Franklin, Lafayette and John Adams all worried that losing Philadelphia would destroy Patriot morale.

Meanwhile, back home in France, Adrienne fretted that Lafayette had been killed in battle. When she learned it was only a leg wound (and one that was healing quickly), she was relieved. Better still, Lafayette’s wartime exploits were earning him applause among the very French nobles who had once discouraged his journey to America.

As Lafayette recovered, Washington tried to attack the British Hessian forces in Germantown, a few miles north of Philadelphia. The battleground was foggy, and though very few men were killed, many were injured due to the poor visibility. Eventually, Washington’s troops were forced to (once again) retreat, though the British were finally impressed with the Americans’ bravery—all the odds were against them, but the ragtag army still persisted.

Washington lost the battle in Pennsylvania, but Horatio Gates, another Patriot general, was much luckier. In a rare turn of events, the Americans outnumbered the British at the Battle of Saratoga, and Gates emerged with a critical victory. Though Washington was happy that his forces had at last succeeded, he was jealous of Gates, especially because Gates wanted to take over Washington’s post as first-in-command.

Washington hoped to invade Philadelphia as a way of getting his own glorious moment, but his colleagues wisely talked him out of it; the Americans could not afford another loss, especially when it came to impressing their European allies. And indeed, the French were pleased enough by the win at Saratoga: when word of Gates’s triumph reached the European continent, Beaumarchais was so excited to break the news that he literally broke his arm on the way to tell his friends.

Saratoga is often thought to be the battle that prompted Louis XVI to officially recognize America as an independent government. Vowell acknowledges there is some truth to that narrative, but she also makes it clear that the French were just as impressed by Washington’s loss as they were by Gates’s win. After all, the Battle at Germantown showed just how committed the Americans were to victory at any cost, and that commitment impressed both King Louis and his Spanish allies.

After Lafayette recovered from his injury, he was ready to get back into the thick of things, so he wrote to Washington asking for increased responsibilities as a military leader. In contrast to many of the other French soldiers, Lafayette had impressed Washington with his eager-to-please attitude and his fast language learning. So, when Nathanael Greene (the Fighting Quaker) prepared to attack the British in New Jersey, Washington sent Lafayette along as his second in command.

In New Jersey, Lafayette was able to find a weak patch in the British line of defense, and—always “determined to be in the way of danger”—he attacked. This successful maneuver earned Lafayette Washington’s respect and command of his own army unit in Virginia. The unit was in a sorry state (again, they had only hunting shirts as uniforms), but Lafayette vowed to provide them with training and even cloth at his own expense.

Crucially, even as Lafayette gained power, he never grew less enamored of General Washington. But in the fall of 1777, many men in Congress (John Adams included) were so frustrated about Washington’s Fabian strategy that they were thinking of demoting him. In fact, once Washington became president, many American dignitaries would scramble to hide or retract the scathing critiques they had made of him during this dark time.

The most involved attempt to replace Washington was known as the “Conway cabal.” Thomas Conway was a Frenchman who had wound up in America because of his relationship with Silas Deane. In a moment where Washington was particularly unpopular, Conway wrote to Congress asking to be made Commander in Chief. When Washington found out, he threatened to quit entirely. Ultimately, Congress refrained from replacing Washington, but they still promoted Conway, adding to Washington’s sense of unease. Throughout it all, Lafayette remained completely loyal: as he wrote in a letter to his beloved commander, “I am now fixed to your fate.”

There was a silver lining in Washington’s waning popularity, however—his lack of military success humanized him and made Americans more able to trust him. This was especially important because politicians like Adams were constantly worried that the new nation would succumb to a military dictatorship (as Rome had when Julius Caesar took over). Dictatorship would be a recurring fear in American politics, especially in the 1820s, when famed general Andrew Jackson shot to power. 

With Philadelphia now under British control, the Patriots’ squabbling reached new heights. As Congress hid out in Massachusetts, Lafayette complained of “parties who Hate one an other as much as the Common enemy.” But while many politicians pushed for the glory that would come regaining Philadelphia, it was impractical, especially since American soldiers lacked weaponry, shoes, and shirts.

Instead of rushing into battle, therefore, Washington decided to take the winter of 1777–1778 as a time for rebuilding American morale. The Patriots decamped to Valley Forge, about 20 miles north of Philadelphia, where they struggled not against the British but against frostbite and a whole host of diseases. At one point, a soldier was so thirsty that he spent the last money he had on a single sip of water.

In the centuries since this freezing winter, Valley Forge has become a symbol of American tenacity. But while later presidents like Dwight D. Eisenhower would valorize the campground, Vowell points out that much of the suffering here was America’s “self-inflicted wound,” the result of a massive administrative failure. As Lafayette himself understood, all this Patriot infighting was undermining the troops’ basic safety and health. 

To expand on this failure, Vowell notes that there were crops available for the soldiers to eat, but no wagons to transport these crops. And while the British troops were well-fed and consistently well-supplied, Washington could not even fill crucial positions in the Valley Forge supply corps. Vowell then draws a direct parallel between this long-ago incompetence and the governmental failures that still plague the U.S. today: long lines at Veterans Affairs hospitals, underfunded public schools, and broken-down highways, for example. Vowell blames many of these failures on Americans’ longstanding reluctance to pay taxes.

At the same time, though, Vowell acknowledges that the soldiers at Valley Forge really did demonstrate “backbone, reliance, grit.” Public figures from Lafayette to Theodore Roosevelt have cited these men as an inspiration, though Vowell applauds the fact that during his presidency, Roosevelt’s idea of strength prioritized his citizens’ health and safety as well as their military might.

When Vowell actually arrives at Valley Forge, she is once again struck by how peaceful and pleasant it looks. She reflects that Gettysburg, the site of the most famous battle of the Civil War, feels similarly unremarkable. The only way to know “about the fifty thousand men who were lost or ruined” at Gettysburg, Vowell writes, is “to read the National Parks Service’s signs.”

Vowell visits Valley Forge with a British friend, but she is surprised to learn that her friend never learned about this crucial revolutionary site in school. Vowell’s friend explains that in his history classes, “we concentrated on the wars we won.” In other words, the American obsession with this war against the British is in many ways one-sided. 

A few months later in 1778, as Lafayette wrote home to his wife Adrienne, the anti-Washington gossip in Congress still had not quieted down. While Washington was trying to—at last—introduce military discipline to his troops, Conway and Gates were still gunning for the top job. Plus, to punish Lafayette for his loyalty to Washington, the Congressional Board of War sent him on a wild goose chase through upstate New York.

Luckily, the Americans had a new asset in the Prussian soldier Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben. Steuben was renowned in Europe for his military prowess, and though the U.S. wanted to stop importing soldiers from overseas, Steuben was too valuable to pass up. So, with Beaumarchais’ help, Steuben made his way across the Atlantic and volunteered his service. The only complication was that Steuben was (probably) gay, and Washington was simply the first of many American generals to be intensely homophobic. Thus, for his entire time in America, Steuben had to keep his true identity secret.

Once Steuben arrived at Valley Forge, he was impressed that the Americans had managed to hold themselves together even with so few resources. But things were looking up: Nathanael Greene was now in charge of the supplying the soldiers, a task he completed with grace, while Steuben was going to teach the Americans some long-overdue battle tactics.

But though Steuben was itching to introduce some discipline into the army at Valley Forge, Washington understood that this would be more difficult in the colonies than it had been in Europe. After all, the soldiers were motivated to fight because they believed in independence, and so it was hard to convince these new Patriots to follow orders of any kind. Steuben, too, soon realized that he could not give orders without explaining why he had given the order in the first place, a reality that made his job harder but that also added to his admiration of the Americans.

Under Steuben’s guidance, the Patriot army finally learned how to perform drills and operate as a coherent unit (and it didn’t hurt that the soldiers finally got uniforms). Washington even promoted Steuben, angering Gates and Conway but pleasing Beaumarchais. Ultimately, Washington had proved himself, and Congress sided with him while his competitors quietly left the highest ranks of the American military.

Best of all, France had at long last formally recognized American independence. But just as Lafayette was joining in a flurry of public celebration, he learned that his baby daughter had died back in France. Though Lafayette expressed his grief in letters to Adrienne, he continued to lead military parades to honor the new Franco-American alliance.

To formalize the alliance, Louis XVI invited Benjamin Franklin—still dressed like a farmer—to the showy palace at Versailles. Vowell points out the irony in the fact that “this deeply weird partnership was history’s first military pact between an absolute monarch and anti-monarchist republicans.” It took a lot of diplomatic skill for Franklin to convince King Louis that supporting an independence movement was really in his best interest. And indeed, a decade later Louis XVI would indeed express regret about backing the Americans’ revolutionary effort.

Inflamed by news that France was formally backing the new United States, the British declared war on the French. At the same time, fearing that they might be outmatched, the British tried to patch things up with the rebellious colonists, offering to repeal some of the steepest taxes. But it was too late. As Washington put it, this far into the war, “nothing short of Independence […] can possibly do.”

Rather than merely celebrate the Patriots’ persistence, however, Vowell points out that independence was far from universal. Slavery was abolished in Great Britain three decades before the U.S. followed suit—because the freedom that the Patriots fought for was really freedom for white men only. To emphasize this contradiction, Vowell quotes Frederick Douglass, the once-enslaved writer, orator and activist who famously declared on Independence Day that “this is your Fourth of July, not mine.”

By May of 1778, the British Commander-in-Chief William Howe had been replaced by Henry Clinton. As Washington debated whether to attack Clinton in New Jersey, he leaned on Greene, Steuben, Knox and Lafayette as his most trusted military advisors.

The other person present in these discussions was General Charles Lee, who had been held as a British prisoner of war—and who was now trying to play both sides of the conflict. When Lee retreated in the heat of the Battle at Monmouth (possibly throwing the fight to the British), Washington flew into a rage and court-martialed him. Still, the town of Fort Lee in New Jersey continues to bear Charles Lee’s name, prompting Vowell to joke that Lee’s behavior was “the most New Jersey-like in the battle, if not the entire war.”

Trapped into a corner by Lee’s retreat, Washington had no choice but to stand and fight Clinton’s Redcoats. Once again, Washington’s “coolness and firmness” rallied the Patriot troops, inspiring great admiration in men like Lafayette and Alexander Hamilton. Vowell adds that the Patriots were also newly able to hold their ground, in large measure because of Steuben’s military guidance.

When Vowell visits Monmouth, she is struck by the monument to Mary Hays, a folk hero who may or may not have actually existed. The legend goes that when Hays found her husband dead, she was so committed to the Patriot cause that she immediately stepped in and took his place. Vowell has heard a rumor that this sculpture of Mary Hays is actually based on the inventor Thomas Edison, and she and her friend Sherm reflect on Edison’s grit.