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Intro
Sarah Vowell, the writer and narrator of Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, introduces her hero, the Marquis de Lafayette. As a teenager, Lafayette recklessly snuck away from cushy life in France to fight for the Patriots in the American Revolution, under the command of General George Washington. Lafayette embodies the bizarre truth that in order to become a democracy, the fledgling United States needed to rely on funding and troops from monarchical France. But more than that, Lafayette—who, upon returning to the country in 1824 for a national tour, was treated as a massive celebrity—is one of the few things all Americans can get behind.
Intense debate and division has always been a part of governance in the United States, from the Revolution until today. As Vowell puts it, there never was a “simpler, more agreeable time” in American politics. Though they were supposed to be fighting against the British, early U.S. leaders like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson could barely agree on what they were fighting for. Instead, they argued endlessly about everything from what kind of prayers to say to how long presidents should be allowed to serve. Vowell sees a parallel between this 18th-century squabbling and 2013, when her tour of Lafayette’s former stomping grounds was interrupted by the government shutdown—which itself had been caused because of divides in contemporary politics.
To better understand how Lafayette became such a unifying figure, Vowell travels to Auvergne, the sleepy French province where her subject was born. From a young age, Lafayette was always in search of glory; even in Auvergne, he put himself in harm’s way whenever he could. After being orphaned at 12, Lafayette—one of the wealthiest teenagers in France—married Adrienne, the daughter of a powerful French noble.
As soon as he learned of the war in the colonies, Lafayette saw his opportunity: now he could finally make a name for himself while also avenging his father, who had been killed by the British years earlier. Though the French government expressly forbade Lafayette from traveling to the colonies, he snuck out anyway, leaving a pregnant Adrienne to fend for herself. Sure enough, as soon as Lafayette arrived in the colonies, he fell in love with what he saw as a “sure refuge of virtue, of honesty, of tolerance, of equality.”
Meanwhile, the French nobility were trying to decide whether they hated the British enough to fund the colonists’ revolution against them. With the help of playwright-turned-spy Pierre Beaumarchais, foreign minister Count Vergennes convinced King Louis XVI to secretly back the Americans’ efforts.
But if the French imagined a unified American army, they were going to sorely disappointed. On the ground, the Patriot soldiers lacked proper weapons or even uniforms; many of them were dressed only in torn hunting shirts. Despite it all, Lafayette volunteered his services for free, which impressed Washington. The two men quickly became lifelong friends: Lafayette helped Washington secure French aid and win the war against the British Redcoats, while Washington was the father figure Lafayette had always searched for.
Though Lafayette was having fun, most early battles of the Revolution were dispiriting losses for the Americans. When Vowell visits the former battle site at Brandywine—where Lafayette was shot in the knee—she marvels at the suburban rolling fields, which show almost no signs of a past violent conflict.
All these losses meant that Washington was increasingly at risk of losing command—and it did not help that the U.S. won the Battle of Saratoga, its first major military victory, thanks not to the future president but to his rival Horatio Gates. Gates joined forces with French immigrant Thomas Conway to try to unseat Washington (a plan that would later be known as the Conway Cabal). To his wife, Lafayette complained of “parties who hate one an other as much as the common enemy.”
In the winter of 1777–1778, Washington moved his forces to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to recoup—but the politicians were too busy arguing to provide food and supplies to the hungry, freezing troops. Vowell compares this historical administrative failure to similar situations today, like the underfunding of public schools. However, with the help of Prussian military mastermind von Steuben, Washington was eventually able to get his troops uniformed and into shape. Cheered by this news, France agreed to formally recognize the United States as an independent nation, and Lafayette was promoted.
The Americans celebrated, but there were still three more years of war ahead. Worse still, after a botched invasion of Rhode Island, the Americans’ age-old anti-French prejudice came roaring back, leading to conflict in which a French soldier was killed. Not for the last time, Lafayette was torn between his loyalty to Washington and his homeland.
Vowell breezes through the next several years of fighting and stalemates to focus on the battle Yorktown in Virginia, in which the Patriots finally secured victory. While Lafayette led troops on land to surround the British, the French Count de Grasse commanded his impressive naval fleet to attack the British at sea. De Grasse wanted to attack immediately, and he tried to get Lafayette to join him by promising it would make Lafayette famous—but Lafayette refused, further proof that he was “growing up.”
The British were easily surrounded on land, but the naval fight was less of a foregone conclusion. In September of 1781, de Grasse set out to sea to fight the British in what is known as the Battle of the Chesapeake. Vowell writes that this was “the most important altercation in the […] Revolution, a take that’s all the more astonishing considering not a single American took part.” Eventually, de Grasse triumphed at sea, Lafayette and fellow soldier Alexander Hamilton claimed victory on land, and Britain surrendered.
Vowell visits Colonial Williamsburg, where the Lafayette impersonator describes how many Americans have forgotten about France’s role in their Revolution. Vowell reveals that she was motivated to write this book to counter Americans’ anti-French feelings (as embodied by the “freedom fries” conflict in the mid-2000s), which have persisted even until today.
Lafayette was a key player in the American Revolution’s fight for democracy, but the democracy the Patriot troops won was limited to white American men. So, to end the book, Vowell reflects on the statue of Lafayette in Lafayette Square, right in front of the White House. For the last century, this square has housed protests for racial justice, anti-imperialism, and gender equality—suggesting that in death as in life, Lafayette remains a steward of the United States’ imperfect freedom.
