Do you know why so many US towns and streets are named Lafayette?

Cur non (why not?) (Photo credit: Reuters)

The American experiment had endured for nearly 50 years when the last surviving major general of the Continental Army who had won American independence travelled to each of the 24 states of the Union to say farewell. When the great tour was over, John Quincy Adams, the 6th president of the United States of America, ordered the United States Ship Brandywine, a 44 gun heavy frigate of the young US Navy to bring him home. 

The ship was rechristened for the long journey across the Atlantic. It was named for the bloody battle in which the old general had bled for American independence. He would sail home to France under the American flag into which he breathed life and American guns that were ready, but still. The American Union was thriving and growing. The political system invented by the Revolutionary generation had endured. Power had been transferred peacefully between political competitors and factions for almost 30 years amidst all manner of turmoil, disagreements and whiffs of rebellion. 

The Missouri Compromise, which could not, and would not hold, was four years old and slavery was front and center in American life. America was becoming, straining, growing, evolving and remembering with the deepest gratitude the great gift it had been given by men like Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Montier. He was a one name superstar in 1824-1825 America. Lafayette. The Marquis de Lafayette was America’s first and greatest friend. 

He was no friend of slavery and he foresaw its end, if not the violence that ended it. He was a philosopher who knew violence, cruelties, suffering and despotism. America’s founding sin would not be solved philosophically or by reason, but rather by a spasm of bloodshed that lay ahead — and if not unimagined was incomprehensible in its totality. 

The grandchildren of the Americans who suffered, died, starved and were freed during that war — black and white — would become the core of the first American Army to leave American shores in 1917 and fight in Europe. When it arrived in France, the American battalion marched on July 4, 1917 to Lafayette’s grave under the command of Colonel Charles Stanton, who famously said, “Lafayette, nous voilà.” (“Lafayette, we are here.”)

Among those American soldiers were the Harlem hell fighters who brought jazz to Europe. They fueled the Harlem renaissance when they returned home, having tasted dignity and decency for the first time in a foreign land. 

Lafayette had prophesied the ending of slavery, but more. He said this of the young America: “The perpetual union of the United States. It has always saved us in times of storm; one day it will save the world.”

The Children of the American Expeditionary Forces who arrived in France in 1917 would become known as the Greatest Generation. They liberated France and saved the world. Many of them — like the 41st president of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush — were born exactly 100 years after Lafayette arrived in America for his farewell. 

When American independence was won at Yorktown, Lafayette was there. He understood the magnitude of the event. 

“Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country,” he said. 

It was human civilization’s before and after event. It ruptured history. It began a new epoch of mankind and human civilization. 

This is what Lafayette understood so clearly. He foresaw the end of slavery and colonialism as certain, and set in motion by the birth of the United States. He also accurately predicted America, and specifically the Deep South, would be among the last places on earth to abandon the abominable practice. 

Wherever Lafayette went in 1824-25, he was greeted by vast crowds of ebullient and grateful Americans. When he arrived in New York Harbor, he was greeted by the old Revolutionary War veterans who were quickly dying out. He took one look around at New York and the scene around him and burst into tears. He would meet with veterans of the War of 1812 ,including black troops who fought under Andrew Jackson in Louisiana. 

He would be overcome with emotion many times on the trip. He descended into the crypt where George Washington lay, to pay his respects to the man who was his commander, friend and inspiration. Lafayette had named his son George Washington Lafayette.

His visit to the African Free School, founded in part by his friend Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and the recently refurbished Independence Hall, were epic events in the young country. Independence Hall had fallen into disrepair because the US capital was in Washington, DC. It was renovated and fixed for Lafayette to use as his office, and he was delighted to be in the place where so many of his friends had signed the Declaration of Independence.

At this time, the country had found itself roiling in a grubby and vicious political campaign between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. The nation’s newspapers were filled with vituperations and accusations as northern and southern interests began to collide with ever increasing intensity. Even then, the contours of American society’s fixed positions and trench lines were being carved like mountain valleys by the glacier of slavery and racial animus. 

When the election was decided in the US House of Representatives in favor of John Quincy Adams, Lafayette was overjoyed to see Andrew Jackson take a stage, and congratulate the new president with goodwill and good wishes. The experiment was succeeding. It has never not been fragile. 

Lafayette was a contented man. He believed that the spread of human freedom was inexorable. He believed he had advanced it and was content that there was unfurnished work in the spread of freedom that he would not live to see.

He was similar to Martin Luther King in that regard. Both men shared an incandescent faith about the inevitability of justice and freedom at the end of a long and inevitable arc. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on America’s 50th birthday. They had reconciled. The United States was brought together by an epic visit and an epic journey by a great friend. He reminded a nation of what it had in common, where it had come from and where it was going. The visit marked the passing of an era and a generation.  

A new American generation was rising. There was a 15-year-old teenage boy named Abraham and a four-year-old boy named Ulysses, both from Illinois. There was a five-year-old slave boy named Frederick, and a two-year-old slave girl named Harriet, both from Maryland. Outside of American territory, Sitting Bull’s father, Jumping Bull, was a 21-year-old Lakota warrior. Civilizations were colliding. The last was giving way to the future and a new frontier was beginning. 

Two hundred years have passed since Lafayette came to say goodbye. Soon America will celebrate its 250th birthday. We are a nation of 330 million people that stretches from the shores of Maine to the western Pacific Ocean and Arctic Circle. The United States is the greatest experiment in human freedom in human civilization. It is a glorious and triumphant achievement that is worthy of celebration, preservation, strengthening and renewal. There is no society on Earth that is more vital, vibrant and complicated. There has never been an untroubled hour in America’s history and there won’t be one. Ever. There is no heaven on earth, but there is America — and for that we must be grateful. We must all feel obligated and responsible for its preservation. 

America turned 200 years old when I was five years old. I’ll be 55 at 250 and won’t be here for 300, but my children will. America will. The 250th birthday of the United States should be a cause for the greatest celebration in our history. The achievement should be honored with reverence, humility, and joy. Our ancestors have given us a great gift. They have given us purpose. They have left us unfinished work. They have given us an America that is still becoming. 

Can we imagine making it better? Can we see the future?  This will be the great test ahead in American politics, and seems to be the root of profound disconnection between the American people and its corrupted political mandarins in Washington, DC, who increasingly make King George III look like a man with a common touch. 

American politics has become cynical, small, stupid, unimaginative, sclerotic and stale. It is corrupted, obtuse and eminently fixable. There is a word that has tremendous power in America. The word is “change.” Change is in the air in America. The last people likely to see it are the politicians who think politics stands at the headwaters of American culture, and the American media that delusionally reports that view as fact. 

When Lafayette left America aboard the Brandywine he knew that he would never return. He didn’t. He was at peace. He knew America would endure. It did. It has. It will. 

It is time to believe and imagine again in America. Isn’t it? America was invented by believers, not cynics. The presence of cynics amongst the believers doesn’t diminish the believers. It simply tests the character of the undecided. There are great choices ahead. There always are. While we wait, perhaps it is worth taking stock and remembering, if but for a moment, how it feels to be a member of the luckiest group of people on earth. Americans. This is a place where anything still remains possible. Two hundred years ago at a moment of division a friend visited and reminded a young nation of its unlimited future. America is a young nation with old politicians. That problem can be fixed. It should be. It’s time to start building tomorrow again in this country.