My Dear General: the relationship between Lafayette and Washington

By Lynn H. Miller

The Marquis de Lafayette first met George Washington in Philadelphia in the summer of 1777.  At 19, the marquis had left his wife and baby in France to pursue his heroic dream of helping to win America’s freedom. His reckless venture had been opposed by his family and by the Court of Louis XVI, but still he came.

From almost his first meeting with Washington, Lafayette claimed the general as the father he had never known since he was only two years old when his own father had died in battle with the English during the Seven Year’s War.

When they first met, Washington was a 45-year-old general struggling against terrible odds to win America’s independence on the battlefield. He was childless and not yet father of his nation, but it’s doubtful that his first regard for Lafayette was paternal. Even though he immediately invited the young nobleman to move into his own quarters, his invitation likely reflected some calculation on his part. The young marquis was extremely rich and well connected in the French Court, where Benjamin Franklin was then using all his diplomatic and social skills to try to secure an alliance. That also explains why, in spite of his youth, Lafayette was appointed a major general by the Continental Congress. It helped that the Marquis had stipulated that he would serve entirely at his own expense.

Nevertheless, Washington’s heartfelt attachment to Lafayette grew quickly, and before long he took on a guiding role in the young man’s life and fully returned his affection. Within months he persuaded Congress to appoint the Marquis to the command of a division in the Continental Army, which greatly delighted the young man and pleased Washington as well. By the end of 1777, the usually aloof Washington was writing to Lafayette of his “friendship and attachment” and of his “purest affection,” adding, “it will ever constitute part of my happiness to know that I stand well in your opinion.”

Only six weeks after they met, the Marquis was wounded at the Battle of Brandywine. When he wrote to his wife afterwards, he made light of his injuries but was ecstatic about his adoration of Washington. “His tender interest for me soon won my heart to him. . . . When he sent me his personal surgeon, he told him to take care of me as if I were his son, because he loved me like one.”

Throughout his life Lafayette was capable of acting rashly out of idealism, but while in America he was both restrained and educated by the older man. It was from Washington that he learned to appreciate the value of liberty, limited government, and the inherent rights of citizens. Without Washington, it is nearly unimaginable that, a dozen years after they first met, Lafayette would write the Declaration of the Rights of Man that would serve as a guide to the French Revolution. (By then Lafayette had also befriended Thomas Jefferson in Paris.)

Washington relished his role as mentor, yet in spite of his republicanism this lord of a Virginia plantation maintained the comportment of an aristocrat. He enjoyed the civility of his protégé’s companionship at dinner. In Lafayette’s company he could reveal emotions that he usually kept carefully buttoned up.

With fighting at a hiatus for the winter months, Lafayette returned home to France in January 1779. He was by then so much appreciated that Congress wrote a spectacular testimonial to Louis XVI about the young man’s services. Lafayette was assured that he could resume his commission whenever he chose to return. Lafayette dashed off a last letter to Washington from his ship in Boston harbor: “The sails are just going to be hoisted, my dear General,” he wrote, “and I have but the time of taking my last leave from you . . .”

Back in France, Lafayette was hailed as a hero—and promptly fathered a son whom he named George Washington Lafayette.

In April 1780, Lafayette returned to America. This time, though, it was by the king’s order and as the representative of France. Franklin’s diplomacy had paid off, and Louis XVI was substantially committed to the cause of American independence. The marquis landed in Boston to thunderous acclaim.

When a courier brought Washington the news of his young friend’s arrival, the American general reacted with such joy that tears rolled down his cheeks. His emotion may have been all the greater since Lafayette also came with word that six thousand French infantrymen would soon be arriving, along with much-needed supplies of arms and ammunition. Lafayette himself had persuaded the French foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, that the French force under General Rochambeau should fight under Washington’s command.

This second venture to America for Lafayette ended with triumph in the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781. The division he commanded had played a critical role in the Franco-American action that brought the surrender of Cornwallis. Soon America’s independence was assured. When word of all this reached Paris, the king himself expressed his “most favorable opinion” of Lafayette, then made the 24-year-old hero a maréchal de camp (brigadier general) in France’s armies.

With the fighting ended, Lafayette again returned home, but not before addressing another billet-doux to Washington. “Adieu, my dear General,” he wrote. “I know your heart so well that I am sure no distance can alter your attachment to me—With the same candor, I assure you that my love, my respect, my gratitude for you are above expressions, that . . . I more than ever feel the strength of those friendly ties that for ever bind me to you.”

Lafayette made a third visit to America in the latter half of 1784, when Washington had retired to Mount Vernon. Lafayette visited him there during his own triumphal tour of American towns and cities. Now Washington’s concern was the need for a stronger federal government, which he made Lafayette’s passion as well, and which become the usual subject of Lafayette’s speeches to American audiences.

Once they parted parted, Washington’s tone was elegiac in the letter he wrote to Lafayette: “In the moment of our separation, upon the road as I travelled, and every hour since, I have felt all that love, respect and attachment for you with which length of years, close connexion and your merits have inspired me. I often asked myself, as our carriages separated, whether that was the last sight I should have of you? And though I wished to say no, my fears answered yes.”

Lafayette would have none of it: “No, my beloved General, our late parting was not by any means a last interview. My whole soul revolts at the idea—and could I harbour it an instant, indeed, my dear General, it would make me miserable.”

But that was the last time they met. Lafayette didn’t return to the United States until 1824, a quarter century after Washington’s death and after decades of political vicissitudes in France, when he made one final visit across the ocean. Sixty-seven years old, a living symbol of the birth of a nation, he came as reminder to the Americans of the ideals and struggles of their independence and their continuing need for unity. The triumphal tour lasted a full year, during which the marquis/general received a hero’s welcome as he visited all of the then-24 states.

In Virginia, he went to Washington’s estate at Mt. Vernon to pay his respects at the tomb of his adopted father. He sent everyone else away, including his son George. He meditated at the tomb for an hour in silence.

Lynn H. Miller is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Temple University. He is co-author of the French Philadelphia and a member of the Board of Directors of the Alliance Francaise de Philadelphie.