Lafayette in the Somewhat United States: Pages 190-268 Summary & Analysis

Though the conflict at Monmouth was hot and difficult, the Patriots ultimately emerged victorious. Vowell and Sherm are hot, too, so they head back home, but not before stopping at Bruce Springsteen’s house. Funnily enough, the famous singer had relatives who fought in the Revolutionary War. But more than that, Sherm wants to visit Springsteen’s house because it reminds him that “not all fights take place on battlefields.” Sometimes, independence is more “personal,” as simple as picking up a guitar or starting to write.

The victory at Monmouth did not help the Americans with very many of their strategic objectives, but it did allow Washington to feel new faith and enthusiasm about his troops. However, the Americans were overly optimistic—even though French support had rejuvenated the Patriot cause, the British were far from finished. In fact, it would be another five years before the war would end, and for most of that time, Washington would do big-picture work instead of commanding individual battles. As Vowell puts it, “the Revolutionary War’s classic period ends at Monmouth.”

Vowell lives near Union Square in New York City, where there are statues of both Washington and Lafayette. Vowell reflects on the fact that though the British did eventually abandon New York (at the end of the war, in 1783), Washington never got the glorious battle he dreamed of.

Initially, Washington had planned to use French naval reinforcements to attack New York. But when the fleet actually arrived, captained by Count d’Estaing, the French realized that the ships were probably too big to fit into the shallow channels of New York Harbor. 

D’Estaing changed his mind frequently and was not always a skilled communicator. More than that, when he first arrived in America, the Patriots worried that he was much less experienced than his British counterpart, Admiral Lord Richard Howe. For Lafayette, however, d’Estaing (who was also from the province of Auvergne) was a much-needed reminder of home.

Instead of attacking New York, Washington had to settle for trying to reclaim British-occupied Rhode Island. Rhode Island was founded as a colony based on religious tolerance, and Nathanael Greene (a native Rhode Islander and a beneficiary of this tolerance) was upset when he was not put in charge of the battle plan.  Instead, Washington made the hotheaded General John Sullivan the leader.

Sullivan and d’Estaing each wanted the glory of leading the charge on Newport, but before they could decide who got to go first, the British arrived. The French fleet set out, only to get caught in a storm and have its sails damaged beyond the point of usefulness. Rather than trying to fight at Newport, d’Estaing headed toward Boston to fix his ships—and though Sullivan had recruited thousands of troops from Massachusetts for the attack, he was still outnumbered without the naval supports.

The Americans viewed d’Estaing’s change of plans as a huge betrayal, and Lafayette felt caught in the middle. Lafayette defended d’Estaing to Washington, and Washington asked Lafayette to persuade d’Estaing to change his mind. Lafayette failed, and in the process, he missed some fighting in Rhode Island. Congress sent Lafayette a formal apology for keeping him out of battle, proving that they finally understood the hotheaded Frenchman’s priorities.

More importantly, the indecision over whether to attack Newport had inflamed tensions beyond France and the burgeoning U.S. The British had hated the French for centuries, and though the Patriots were nominally no longer British, they had their fair share of “ancient hereditary prejudices” (as one Patriot soldier wrote in a letter home).

Eventually, this disagreement escalated to physical violence, and two Frenchmen were assaulted; one, the Lieutenant Saint-Sauveur, did not survive. To make matters worse, Saint-Sauveur (who was, like most of the French, very Catholic) died in Puritan Boston. Eventually, to appease the French, the Americans did give the dead soldier a proper Catholic burial, though they did so in the dead of night. The Patriots also promised to create a monument to Saint-Sauveur, which they did not actually get around to building until World War I.

Ultimately, the Franco-American alliance persevered. But when Lafayette wanted to invade Canada on behalf of the French, Washington said no, fearing that hostilities could return if the French were to regain such a major New World colony. Vowell sees this as an early instance of American isolationism, especially because Washington remarked that “no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest.”

In early 1779, Lafayette went back to France for the year. He was initially put on house arrest as punishment for sneaking out to America two years earlier—but even this punishment could not conceal the depths of French enthusiasm for Lafayette’s victories abroad. While home, Lafayette got Adrienne pregnant again (with a son he later named George Washington Lafayette). He also nagged Vergennes to send more French weapons and soldiers across the Atlantic.

When Lafayette returned to the colonies, Washington shed tears of joy to be reunited with his friend. But the military situation was bleak: two days later, the British took the city of Charleston, South Carolina, and the Americans were exhausted and once again starving and yearning for good clothes.

Fortunately, a few days after the loss at Charleston, 6,000 French troops arrived at Newport, commanded by the very experienced Count Rochambeau. Lafayette went up to convince Rochambeau to attempt a joint attack on New York, but the middle-aged Rochambeau refused to take orders from a 20-year-old, and the relationship between the two Frenchmen quickly deteriorated. From then on, Rochambeau would always communicate directly with Washington.

Adding to the tension, trusted general Benedict Arnold was revealed to be a British spy when he was caught smuggling information about Washington’s plans to the Redcoats. A panicked Washington wrote to Ben Franklin in France to persuade Franklin to ask for further French reinforcements. Franklin expressed Washington’s anxiety to Vergennes, and Vergennes contributed 6 million more French lives to the Patriot cause (of the 25 million that Franklin had requested).

Washington could not forgive Benedict Arnold for his betrayal, so though the American troops remained poorly fed and clothed, Washington ordered them to trek down to Virginia and kill Arnold. Fortunately, Lafayette was in charge of this particular mission, and as the troops marched south, the charming Frenchman convinced various citizens to donate food and supplies to the passing soldiers.  

Due to a change in Arnold’s plans, Lafayette’s mission was called off as soon as he reached Virginia, and he headed north—only to be told to go south again to support Nathanael Greene. Many of the Patriot troops under Lafayette’s command deserted because they were so sick of going back and forth. Lafayette wrote what Vowell labels a “melodramatic” letter to Vergennes, begging for money. Vergennes promised to send some, and he also told Lafayette that the Count de Grasse—currently commanding the French navy in the Caribbean—would soon head up the Atlantic to offer support to the Patriots. De Grasse’s arrival would prove to be a turning point in the war.

Next on her tour of the Eastern seaboard, Vowell stops at Colonial Williamsburg, which she thinks might be “Republican Disneyland.” But instead, she finds a George Washington impersonator complaining about states’ rights and emphasizing the “great debt” all Americans owe to Lafayette. Vowell and her family take in the old-timey, “foreign” look of this early British settlement.

Vowell is presently surprised by the anger and complexity of the war reenactors, many of whom are especially angry about the lack of shoes for Patriot troops. In fact, by 1781, the American army was in dire straits. Only 5 of 500 promised recruits showed up for Steuben’s Virginia militia, and Thomas Jefferson, the state’s governor, did little to encourage his people to pitch in.

The British general Lord Cornwallis had thousands of men stationed in Virginia, and so a panicked Lafayette took matters into his own hands. He recruited James, an enslaved Virginia man, to spy on Benedict Arnold, and teamed up with General Anthony Wayne to antagonize the British forces. The only problem was that both Lafayette and Wayne (sometimes called “Mad Wayne”) loved glory, and older soldiers feared that the two young men would push each other to commit more and more daring acts of war.

These fears came to light when Lafayette and Wayne played right into Cornwallis’ hands, attacking what they thought was a small legion of men only to discover that it was actually a much larger battalion. Still, Lafayette and Wayne were skilled enough fighters that they were ultimately able to turn the battle around, forcing the British to retreat and eking out a minor Patriot victory (or at the very least avoiding defeat). As the Washington impersonator at Colonial Williamsburg explained to Vowell’s tour group, “Cornwallis did not make a mistake. We turned what he did into a mistake.”

Meanwhile, though Washington still wanted to attack New York, Rochambeau and de Grasse were planning to plant the French navy at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The French troops were dressed in fancy plumed hats and colorful coats, whereas the Americans barely had any clothes on. Each side was shocked by the other’s appearance. Yet rather than dividing the two nations, the French saw the Americans’ ragged clothing as another proof of the Patriots’ determination and wholesomeness.

Anxious to get back to protecting the French sugar plantations in the Caribbean, de Grasse sent word that his ships would arrive in Virginia by September 3, 1781. Washington needed to transport thousands of foot soldiers down to Virginia, and to incentivize this giant trek, he realized he would need to pay the Patriot army (which Congress had not been able to do in years). Rochambeau generously loaned Washington some Spanish gold, and the loyal American troops at last received some form of payment for their services.

Cornwallis and his men had chosen to make their camp in Yorktown, a small finger of land off the coast of Virginia. This was a poor strategic decision: because Yorktown was on a peninsula, it would be easy for the Americans to surround the British on all sides. Washington put Lafayette in charge of encircling the Redcoats in Virginia, while other officers set up decoy tents near New York City to confuse the British about the Patriots’ plan of attack.

Sure enough, on September 3, de Grasse’s ships arrived in the Chesapeake Bay and the British were surrounded. Washington wanted to wait for more re-enforcements, but de Grasse wanted to attack immediately. To get Lafayette on his side, de Grasse promised “further glory” if the young general could persuade Washington to attack now. But knowing that waiting was more strategically sound, Lafayette restrained himself—further proof that he was “growing up.”

Washington was taking his time making his way to Yorktown. On the way down, he stopped at his beloved home in Mount Vernon. Washington’s love of this quiet mansion would prove tremendously impactful for the health of the young nation. Rather than holding onto the presidency indefinitely, his “homebody side” compelled him to step down after only two terms, setting a crucial precedent for future U.S. leaders about the peaceful transfer of power.

Before Washington could fully take a victory lap, however, he learned that the British navy had also arrived in the Chesapeake. Fearing a shoot-out in the small bay, de Grasse brought his fleet out to sea to fight the British in what is known as the Battle of the Chesapeake. Vowell thinks that this battle was probably “the most important altercation in the American Revolution, a take that’s all the more astonishing considering not a single American took part.”

At sea, the two opposing navies lined up and shot at each other—but there was no clear winner until September 9, when a second French fleet started making its way to Yorktown. The British were doomed, and it was largely thanks to de Grasse. With the help of her historian friend Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, Vowell makes the case that de Grasse is the largely under-sung hero of the final stages of the Revolution.

Vowell meets the Lafayette reenactor at Williamsburg, who once again emphasizes just how much the Patriots needed the French—and particularly Lafayette—in order to win the war. Vowell is reminded of the reunion between Washington and Lafayette after Yorktown, when the Americans had emerged victorious from the naval fight: the two men hugged “with as much ardor as ever an absent lover kissed his mistress on his return.”

America has not always acknowledged its debt to France. In 2003, when France refused to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, many Americans (especially Republicans) began to loudly critique France, even pushing to rename French fries “freedom fries.” While all this was going on, Vowell came across the tiny dress that Herman Melville’s wife had worn when she’d met Lafayette as a baby, still perfectly preserved. The contradiction between Americans’ modern-day anger at the French and their deep appreciation for Lafayette spurred Vowell to start her research on the French general.

Vowell interviews Mark Schneider, the Lafayette impersonator; Schneider is so charismatic as the Marquis that there is an entire Facebook page devoted to him. He tells Vowell that his favorite part of his job is being able to convince anti-French tourists to love and appreciate the longstanding Franco-American friendship.

The next day, Vowell visits Yorktown for the annual Yorktown Day celebration of American victory. A French NATO general talks about the warm welcome Lafayette received on his 1824 tour throughout the United States. To end the day, Vowell gets some lunch with her family—and sees that freedom fries are on the menu.

“The lesson of Yorktown,” Vowell summarizes, “is the value of cooperation.” The British failed to talk to each other, and the French communicated almost perfectly with the Americans. Of particular interest to Vowell is the fact that both de Grasse and Washington were able to talk “each other out of bad ideas.” For example, de Grasse initially wanted to leave Yorktown entirely because he feared the British might outnumber them. Only because Washington patiently urged caution was de Grasse finally willing to remain in place.

Though General Clinton took all the blame for the loss at Yorktown, it was not fully his fault. Rather, it was the result of a breakdown in communication between himself and Thomas Graves, who commanded the crucial British fleet. Besides, Washington and the rest of the Patriots had fought exceptionally well: with the help of men like Lafayette, Steuben and Alexander Hamilton, the Americans cut the Redcoats on Yorktown off from food to such an extent that they resorted to killing and eating their horses. Because starvation was a key part of the Americans’ tactics, Vowell feels that “the real heroes of Yorktown were the Corps of Sappers and Miners, the men who dug the ditches laid out by the French engineers.”

On October 6, 1781, the Patriots snuck up on the Redcoats and dug their final line of trenches. Three days later, the Americans began pelting the British nonstop with ammunition; one soldier recalled that “at night you could see the mortar shells raining down on Yorktown.” The British would not be able to withstand this siege for very long.

The final obstacles to victory were the British redoubts, the well-made earthen forts that served as the final line of defense for the Redcoat camp at Yorktown. Under Alexander Hamilton’s command, 400 Americans attacked one of the redoubts. As soon as the code word “Rochambeau” was uttered, the Patriot troops pounced—and the British, gravely outnumbered, caved after five minutes. Four hundred Frenchmen struggled for half an hour to take a redoubt on the other side of the camp, but soon that was accomplished, too.

Realizing how dire his situation had become, Cornwallis did his best to escape. But before he could get all of his troops to safety, a storm broke out, leaving Cornwallis with no option besides surrender. Through cannon fire, the Americans recognized a Redcoat drummer approaching their camp with a white flag—and at this sign of surrender, the Americans ceased firing. It was the first time in eight days that there had been silence in Yorktown.

Washington gave Cornwallis two hours to prepare for the surrender negotiations, which took place in a clapboard building known as the Moore house (which is still standing today). The British wanted their surrender decked out with the traditional “honors of war,” but Lafayette remembered the humiliation Americans had suffered at Charleston, when the Redcoats had denied them these very same honors. He therefore pushed for the Patriots to make the British surrender with any flags or pomp and circumstance. Traveling to the battlefield in 2013, Vowell remarks that it is a “silent, grassy expanse surrounded by trees.” It is hard for her to imagine that a world-altering fight occurred here.

The surrender itself was mortifying for the British. Cornwallis was too embarrassed to go, so he sent his second-in-command, General Lincoln. Lincoln at first moved to give Cornwallis’ sword to Rochambeau, but Rochambeau refused; Lincoln then approached Washington, who referred Lincoln to Washington’s own number-two general. Lafayette was giddy, but Washington remained calm, urging his troops to maintain their dignity and not to rejoice too much at the British humiliation.

Back in Europe, the French celebrated at news of American victory while the British nursed their wounds. The only thing left to do was make it official, which happened in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris. As Vowell points out, due to the complicated European system of alliance, all of the continent (from the Netherlands to Spain) was now seemingly involved in this war across the Atlantic.

When it came down to it, however, the new United States went behind France’s back to reach an agreement with Britain—acting in violation of the Franco-American Treaty of Alliance. Upon learning of this breach of trust from Ben Franklin, Vergennes fretted that “we shall be but poorly paid for all that we have done for the United States, and for securing to them a national existence.”

The park ranger at the Yorktown battlefield ends Vowell’s tour by asking visitors to think about the promise inherent in the Declaration of Independence. The ranger acknowledges that “we’ve made horrible mistakes, and we’ve had incredible successes” in the years since that document was signed, especially when it comes to Jefferson’s statement that “all men are created equal.”

Vowell ponders why Americans celebrate July 4—the day that Declaration was signed—rather than Yorktown day, when the war was actually won. She decides that it is because Americans, following in the footsteps of men like John Adams, tend to believe that the Revolution was more about a change of heart than “amputated limbs and bayoneted torsos.” Moreover, Americans do not want to acknowledge just how essential the French were to their victory.

The French have not forgotten this alliance so quickly. Every Fourth of July at Pipcus Cemetery in Paris, the French put a bright new American flag over Lafayette’s grave (which is filled with dirt from Bunker Hill). Vowell notes that Pipcus is filled with many bodies of people who were slaughtered during the Terror, or the period of intense violence that ultimately marked the downfall of the French Revolution. In fact, Lafayette’s wife, Adrienne, would have been a victim of the Terror were it not for some last-minute U.S. involvement on her behalf.

And though Lafayette’s loyalty was not always repaid, more often than not, the U.S. came through for its French allies. In World War I, when America at last entered the sprawling conflict, the generals began their campaign by marching directly to Pipcus Cemetery. An American colonel stood in front of Lafayette’s tomb and declared that “in the presence of the illustrious dead, we pledge our hearts and our honor in carrying this war to a successful issue. Lafayette, we are here.”

To Vowell’s dismay, when most Americans hear the word Lafayette, they hardly know this was the name of a critical historical figure. Instead, they think of all the many places that bear this name: there are cities called Lafayette in Louisiana, Colorado, Utah and Oregon, to name just a few.  Jokingly, Vowell “moralize[s] upon the instability of human glory.” In 1824, 80,000 Americans went to greet Lafayette’s ship, and now, nobody even remembers him.

One of the places named after Lafayette is Lafayette Square, located directly in front of the White House. This square is where many of the country’s most passionate protestors go to make their grievances heard. People of radically different beliefs—from civil rights activists to members of the Ku Klux Klan—have gathered here to try and get through to the highest levels of government.

Though some presidents have tried to shut themselves off from Lafayette Square, protestors have gone to court to keep the square open, ensuring that it remains a place for the public to get the government’s ear. The courts always side with the protestors; in one such ruling, a judge declared that the “airing of opinions is historic in our democratic society, and one of its cardinal values.” Vowell continues to list the varying protests that have taken place here, emphasizing that they are just a regular part of life in front of the White House.

The first major protest in Lafayette Square occurred in the early 20th century, when suffragettes picketed in the hopes of passing a constitutional amendment that would give women the right to vote. Though these women faced violence and the threat of arrest, they continued to fight for their voice in American democracy.

In September of 1918, Evelyn Wotherspoon Wainwright, one of the leaders of this movement, walked up to the Lafayette statue in the middle of the square. Calling on the memory of Lafayette as the ultimate defender of democracy, Wainwright prayed for the passage of an amendment that would take another two years to finally be made law. In her final plea for a voice for women, Wainwright called out to the famed French general: “Lafayette,” she cried, “we are here.”