Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

by

Sarah Vowell

Patriots Term Analysis

The Patriots were the rebellious American colonists who rejected British rule in favor of the new, independent United States. Since many colonists remained loyal to King George III and the English crown, identifying oneself as a Patriot—as opposed to a Loyalist—was a divisive political statement. Once the Revolutionary War actually broke out, the American forces would deem themselves the Patriot army. Though the Patriots were notoriously underprepared (they had only torn hunting shirts as uniforms, for example), their passion and determination to win independence drove them to win the war. Famous Patriot soldiers include George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Henry Knox.

Patriots Quotes in Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

The Lafayette in the Somewhat United States quotes below are all either spoken by Patriots or refer to Patriots. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Democracy, Disagreement, and Compromise Theme Icon
).
Pages 1-59 Quotes

Said Lafayette, “I did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence.” Spoken like every only child ever.

Related Characters: Marquis de Lafayette (speaker), Sarah Vowell (speaker), Jean de Noailles
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:

Because these words convinced Louis XVI to open his heart and, more important, his wallet to the patriots, Vergennes’s memo arguably had as much practical effect on the establishment of American independence as the Declaration of Independence itself. Jefferson’s pretty phrases were incomplete without the punctuation of French gunpowder.

Related Characters: Sarah Vowell (speaker), Thomas Jefferson , King Louis XVI , Count de Vergennes
Page Number: 50
Explanation and Analysis:
Pages 126-190 Quotes

As for Washington, how could he not envy Gates? Saratoga was the turning point of the war, the most spectacular patriot victory to date. And when it went down, His Excellency was more than 200 miles away, licking his wounds from his recent setbacks.

Related Characters: Sarah Vowell (speaker), George Washington, Horatio Gates
Page Number: 130
Explanation and Analysis:

“Do not underestimate my ignorance about a war we were not really taught in England,” [my British friend] continued. “We concentrated on the wars we won—the First World War, the Second, the Tudors. Nobody taught me American history. Well, maybe a bit when we study the Georges—there was always trouble off stage in America. To us it was just the loss of a colony.”

Related Characters: Sarah Vowell (speaker)
Page Number: 160
Explanation and Analysis:

Washington had also been ruminating on a deeper, less obvious stumbling block than the fact that summer—and summer battle season—was coming all too soon. Namely, that the rebels under his command were not fighting to become free; they were cornered into fighting because the government of Great Britain had failed to understand that they already were. […] Yet the self-respect and self-possession that incited said people to revolt was hindering the revolution goal, independence, because functional armies required hierarchy and self-denial, orders barked and orders followed.

Related Characters: Sarah Vowell (speaker), Marquis de Lafayette, George Washington, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben
Page Number: 167
Explanation and Analysis:

Anyone who accepts the patriot’s premise that all men are created equal must come to terms with the fact that the most obvious threat to equality in eighteenth-century North America was not taxation without representation but slavery. Parliament would abolish slavery in the British Empire in 1833, thirty years before President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. A return to the British fold in 1778 might have freed American slaves three decades sooner, which is what, an entire generation and a half? Was independence for some of us more valuable than freedom for all of us? As the former slave Frederick Douglass put it in an Independence Day speech in 1852, “This is your 4th of July, not mine.”

Related Characters: Sarah Vowell (speaker), Frederick Douglass (speaker), Thomas Jefferson
Page Number: 178
Explanation and Analysis:
Pages 190-268 Quotes

The Americans, who had been British for centuries and not British for only three years, were quick to turn on the French after Newport—too quick. Most of that ire can be explained by the current events in Rhode Island, but some of the patriot disdain was older, in their blood.

Related Characters: Sarah Vowell (speaker), Count d’Estaing , Benedict Arnold , John Sullivan
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis:

Washington repeated this performance as president, leaving office after two terms rather than staying on his president for life, because he honestly wanted to live out his days, as Voltaire put it, cultivating his own garden—and painting his dining room the world’s most alarming shade of green. Washington’s homebody side tempered his ambition, staving off the lure of power.

Related Characters: Sarah Vowell (speaker), Marquis de Lafayette, George Washington
Page Number: 233
Explanation and Analysis:

For that reason, some scholars consider this somewhat forgotten maritime dust up—referred to as the Battle of the Chesapeake […]—to be the most important altercation of the American Revolution, a take that’s all the more astonishing considering not a single American took part in it. Nor did a single American even witness it.

Related Characters: Sarah Vowell (speaker), Marquis de Lafayette, Count de Grasse , Alexander Hamilton
Page Number: 234
Explanation and Analysis:

Over at the battlefield, we drove from the site of the French encampment to the French artillery park to the French Cemetery, where someone had left a single yellow daisy on the plaque commemorating the burial of fifty unknown French soldiers. Then we went for lunch on the York River waterfront at the Water Street Grille, a few yards away from a statue of Admiral de Grasse. There were freedom fries on the menu.

Related Characters: Sarah Vowell (speaker), Count de Grasse
Related Symbols: Freedom Fries
Page Number: 240
Explanation and Analysis:
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Patriots Term Timeline in Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

The timeline below shows where the term Patriots appears in Lafayette in the Somewhat United States. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Pages 1-59
Youthful Glory vs. Mature Leadership Theme Icon
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...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... (full context)
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...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... (full context)
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...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... (full context)
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...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... (full context)
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...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’... (full context)
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...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... (full context)
Pages 60-125
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...just had his first success of the war. In December of 1776, the general led Patriot troops across the Delaware River in New Jersey to launch a sneak attack on the... (full context)
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...hoped that the Continental Congress would rejoice at his arrival. Instead, they dismissed him; the Patriot politicians were sick of fancy Frenchmen (many of them sent by Silas Deane) coming over... (full context)
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...was able to sneak away to Fort Ticonderoga in New York, where many of the Patriots’ weapons were held. Knox then smuggled the weapons thousands of miles—overnight—up to Boston, allowing the... (full context)
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...when Lafayette promised to serve “at his own expense” and “as a volunteer” that the Patriots agreed to let him join. From his first moments in the U.S., Vowell comments, Lafayette... (full context)
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...awkwardness with Washington. But the awkwardness was overcome when once Lafayette saw how outmatched the Patriots were; many of them had only torn hunting shirts instead of proper uniforms, for example.... (full context)
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...on the colonists’ side, the British were far from unified in their fight against the Patriots. Most crucially, British Commander in Chief William Howe had a plan to attack the Patriots... (full context)
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...are able to celebrate a battle that was far from victorious for the Americans. The Patriots lost here, largely because the lush hills around Brandywine allowed the British Redcoats to conceal... (full context)
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...and ready for blood, nevertheless begged Washington to allow him to join the fray. The Patriots’ Fabian strategy was supposed to be an orderly retreat, but instead, the soldiers were fleeing... (full context)
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...talk about their wives’ resentment of their historical hobbies. Many of the men acting as Patriots are wearing the shoddy hunting shirts that, at least to Lafayette, symbolized both the colonists’... (full context)
Pages 126-190
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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... (full context)
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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... (full context)
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With Philadelphia now under British control, the Patriots’ squabbling reached new heights. As Congress hid out in Massachusetts, Lafayette complained of “parties who... (full context)
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...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... (full context)
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...“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.  (full context)
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...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... (full context)
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Under Steuben’s guidance, the Patriot army finally learned how to perform drills and operate as a coherent unit (and it... (full context)
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Rather than merely celebrate the Patriots’ persistence, however, Vowell points out that independence was far from universal. Slavery was abolished in... (full context)
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...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... (full context)
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...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... (full context)
Pages 190-268
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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... (full context)
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...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... (full context)
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...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.... (full context)
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...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... (full context)
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...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... (full context)
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...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). (full context)
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...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.... (full context)
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...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... (full context)
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...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... (full context)
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...the two nations, the French saw the Americans’ ragged clothing as another proof of the Patriots’ determination and wholesomeness. (full context)
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...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... (full context)
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...officers set up decoy tents near New York City to confuse the British about the Patriots’ plan of attack. (full context)
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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... (full context)
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...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,... (full context)
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On October 6, 1781, the Patriots snuck up on the Redcoats and dug their final line of trenches. Three days later,... (full context)
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...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... (full context)
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...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... (full context)