Washington left for Mount Vernon, assuming that George was in college, but the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to put the youngster under his own roof. He bombarded his advisers, asking how to do that without causing a diplomatic crisis. In October he learned that George and Frestel had gone to New York, where they stayed with La Colombe. He wrote to Hamilton, once again a New York lawyer, asking his advice on whether to take him in. He was sure that the boy felt abandoned in a strange land. Hamilton advised him not to see George, but suggested that it would be all right to write to him.48
Back in Philadelphia, the president did. Considerations “of a political nature,” he told his godson, meant that he should remain “incog” for the time being, but he could rest assured that his own affection for George’s father, Washington’s “friend and compatriot in arms,” extended “with not less warmth” to his son. He therefore should not ascribe presidential silence to “a wrong cause.” He asked George and Frestel to see Hamilton, whom he had authorized to look after their well-being. Besides, Hamilton “was always in habits of great intimacy” with the boy’s father. He could not predict how long circumstances would keep them apart, but he looked forward to embracing George “with fervency” as soon as he could.
Washington sent this letter unsealed to Frestel, asking him to explain the situation. He sent both letters to Hamilton, to read and take to the tutor. He would follow his advice on how to handle the matter, because he was “distrustful of my own judgment in deciding on this business lest my feelings should carry me further [than] prudence (while I am a public character) will warrant.” Washington had “indirectly” sounded out the French ambassador, Pierre Adet, “on the coming over of the family of Fayette generally, but not as to the exact point.” The diplomat answered that “as France did not make war upon women and children he did not suppose that their emigration could excite any notice.” The case might be different, however, if one of them moved into the presidential household. Washington proposed a half-measure, moving George and Frestel to a suburb of Philadelphia.49
The president heard nothing from George, Frestel, or Hamilton. By December 1795 he was frantic. The boy’s case gave him pain, he told Hamilton, “and I do not know how to get relieved from it.” In January 1796, he asked James Madison what he could do to fulfill the obligations of friendship and his own wishes “without involving consequences.” In February, he threw caution to the wind and asked Hamilton to tell George and Frestel to come to Philadelphia. He next sent his invitation directly to George, and in March he tried unsuccessfully to talk Congress into officially providing for the boy’s care in the president’s house. George finally arrived on his doorstep in early April.50
Their meeting was like a tearful reunion between the elder man and his adopted son, because Washington adored the boy at first sight. George and Frestel wanted him to pressure the Austrians into releasing Lafayette. He had, after all, abandoned caution to take them into his home and had gotten away with it. Washington asked Thomas Pinckney to go from Madrid to London to tell the Austrian ambassador that releasing Lafayette was “an ardent wish of the people of the United States, in wch I sincerely add mine.” He asked Hamilton whether it would be a good idea for the president to write a private letter to the Austrian emperor explaining his and the American people’s wish that Lafayette be set free to return to the United States.51
Washington did not wait for a reply. Nothing in his time as president tore at his heart more than his inability to do anything officially about Lafayette’s situation. The time for restraint had passed, and he wrote to the emperor on May 15, 1796. “It will readily occur to your Majesty,” he began, “that occasions may sometimes exist, on which official considerations would constrain the chief of a nation to be silent and passive in relation even to objects which affect his sensibility, and claim his interposition as a man. Finding myself precisely in this situation at present, I take the liberty of writing this private letter to your Majesty; being persuaded, that my motives will also be my apology for it.”
He described America’s gratitude to Lafayette and his own affection for him. He asked His Imperial Majesty to consider whether Lafayette’s long imprisonment, the confiscation of his estate, and the poverty and scattering of his family did not “form an assemblage of sufferings, which recommend him to the mediation of Humanity? Allow me, Sir! on this occasion to be its organ; and to entreat that he may be permitted to come to this country” on such terms as the emperor might “think it expedient to prescribe.”52
Washington knew that if he hesitated, the politicians around him would object to the letter. He sent it to Pinckney, asking him to find a way to deliver it to Vienna. His anxiety over Lafayette’s situation, he said, was increased by young George’s distress, “grieving for the unhappy fate of his parents.” Seeing that compelled him to take such a bold step as to address the Austrian ruler directly. His message ended up on the mountain of unanswered mail piling up at the Austrian court, hundreds of letters from America and England appealing for Lafayette’s release.53
Washington folded his godson into his family and took him to Mount Vernon when Congress adjourned for the summer. He had the boy resume his studies under Frestel’s guidance, took him on his rounds, and mixed him in with the other children in the house. He loved him unabashedly. Visitors to Mount Vernon were amazed by the scene at dinner. “A few jokes passed between the president and young Lafayette whom he treats more like a child than a guest,” one of them said. Washington urged Lafayette’s friends in Europe to organize a campaign to free him, making it clear that he wanted him in the United States.54
It was to no avail, and Lafayette, Adrienne, and the girls remained in prison. But what the president of the United States could not accomplish, Napoleon did. He smashed the Austrian armies in Italy in the spring of 1797 and marched on Vienna. The hills were alive with the sound of “La Marseillaise,” and the emperor sued for peace, abandoning his ally the king of Great Britain, whose navy mutinied. Things then became more complicated.
Talleyrand had escaped the Terror by going to America. He had returned to France in 1796 and became foreign minister. He demonstrated something that Lafayette never figured out—that it is possible to play both sides in a game, but only one of them at a time. Also back in France was Madame de Staël, and the two of them hatched a plot to free Lafayette and his friends La Tour-Maubourg and Bureaux de Pusy. The latter two were no problem, but the former commander of the Paris National Guard was still a loaded subject in France. Nevertheless, the Directory urged Napoleon to make Lafayette’s freedom part of the peace negotiations, assuming that he would go to America. Napoleon went along but stipulated that on his release Lafayette could go to America or anywhere else—except France. The Austrian chancellor sent his chamberlain to Olmütz to negotiate, and living conditions there suddenly improved. The Austrian told Lafayette that his release depended on his signing an oath swearing that he would never again set foot on Austrian territory. He replied that his sovereign was the French people and he would go wherever they sent him. He remained true to his principles, but they almost cost him his freedom.
The French and Austrian parties to the various negotiations soon reached one point of agreement—all Europe would be better off without Lafayette. They decided to move him to Hamburg and hand him over to the American consul. The Prisoners of Olmütz set out on September 19, 1797, in a closely guarded caravan. Once he was out of the gates, Lafayette heard that Napoleon had engineered a coup in Paris two weeks earlier, establishing a new three-man Directory. The prisoner thought that betrayed the revolution. He also learned about the condition barring him from France. He might be loved in America, but he was hated in his native land. He was determined to get back there, to win back its lost love.
The caravan reached Hamburg on October 4, and the Austrian consul handed the prisoners over to the American consul, Samuel Williams, “with much dignity,” according to Gouverneur Morris. Washington’s adopted son was free.5
5
THIS AFFAIR HAS MADE ME VERY UNHAPPY
Rumors that Lafayette was free reached the United States before he really was. George wanted to go back to France. Washington tried to talk him into waiting until there was definite word, because his family might be on the way to America. The boy insisted and left Mount Vernon on October 12 with $300 in his pocket and a letter from Washington to his father. His godfather told all his friends that George had left against his advice, sounding like every parent who has raised a child until he was old enough to make his own mistakes. “I said all I could, with decency,” he told La Colombe as he did the others, to talk George into waiting until he received verified information, but the boy’s eagerness to see his parents “was not to be restrained.” His frustrated sighs were almost visible in his handwriting. Now he had two Lafayettes to miss.56
The letter George carried from Washington asked Lafayette to have his son tell him about how he had tried, “though ineffectually,” to gain his release. He congratulated his adopted son on regaining his freedom, saying no one else could do it “with more cordiality, with more sincerity, or with greater affection.” He explained why he had not been more public in his attempts to get him out of prison. As for his godson, “[h]is conduct…has been exemplary in every point of view, such as has gained him the esteem, affection, and confidence of all who have had the pleasure of his acquaintance.” He also praised the boy’s tutor. “No parent could have been more attentive to a favourite son,” he said. Washington concluded, “Having bid a final adieu to the walks of public life,” meaning that he had left the presidency the previous March, “I shall refer you to Mr. Frestal and George…to give you a general view of our situation, and of the party, which in my opinion, has disturbed the peace and tranquillity” of the United States. The “party” was France, because of the XYZ Affair and the Quasi War. He invited the whole Lafayette family to America.57
Washington soon received the first definite news that Lafayette had reached Hamburg. Warmly giving his blessings to both the boy and his tutor, in December 1797 he sent them another letter to take to his adopted son. He did not know whether Lafayette had returned to France or had left for America. If the latter was the case, “of all the numerous friends which you will find here none will greet you, Madam Lafayette and your daughters with a more sincere and cordial welcome than myself and all parts of this family would do.” They all had grieved for his suffering and rejoiced at his liberation.58
Where Lafayette would go was up in the air. From Hamburg on October 6, 1797, he wrote a flowery letter to Napoleon, honoring “the services he has rendered to the cause of liberty and of our country. The gratitude which we delight in owing him is graven forever on our hearts.” Although he proclaimed his patriotism and loyalty, he made no secret of the fact that he viewed the coup of September 4 as a betrayal of the revolution. He so told the French ambassador, who informed him that he could return to France if he signed an oath of loyalty to the new government. He refused. His stiff-necked principles meant that he remained an exile. He and his family moved to Holstein, in Denmark.59
Before Lafayette left, he wrote an affectionate letter to his adoptive father, “to express to you the feelings of my filial heart…. With what eagerness and pleasure I would hasten to fly to Mount Vernon, there to pour out all the sentiments of affection, respect and gratitude which ever bound me and more than ever bind me to you.” He wanted more than anything to take his whole family to Mount Vernon at once, but Adrienne was still sick and could not face an ocean crossing in the stormy season. They would go to America the following spring if they could.60
Lafayette was not being entirely honest, because he wanted to retrieve the love of France before he dipped into that of America. He wrote Washington again in late December 1797, after he heard about the poor reception of the American peace commission in Paris, the start of the XYZ Affair. “I need not [be] telling you that this affair has made me very unhappy,” he said. “I never thought I should live to see such an event, which has very much damped the pleasure of my return to this world.”61
The Lafayettes were living on the charity of Adrienne’s family, at her aunt’s estate; sympathetic Americans also chipped in. Adrienne’s health improved, then declined, then improved again. She traveled to France when she could, to straighten out their affairs and lobby for her husband’s return. George arrived in Paris looking for his family, to find their home a burnt-out ruin. Some Fayettistes asked for an audience with Napoleon, who was away on campaign, but his wife, Joséphine, gave George a grand reception, and told him, “Your father and my husband must make common cause.” Napoleon wanted to cloak his ambition in Fayettiste republicanism and was willing to use the boy’s father as a prop. George made it to Holstein in February 1798, bearing Washington’s letters.62
There might be hope for Lafayette yet. He would let the Directory use him if it restored him to favor in his native land.
I HOPED THIS WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED
Lafayette’s two countries seemed about to go to war in 1798—at least, so claimed the Federalists, who controlled Congress and the White House and were generally hostile to France, less so to Britain. The Federalists authorized a “provisional army” of 10,000 men, later doubled (but never called up). Other measures to suppress sedition (meaning criticism of Federalist politicians) and to drive foreign (meaning French) agents out of the country aroused the Democratic-Republicans to fury. The United States split into two hostile camps, although Washington was everyone’s choice to command the army. He agreed, on the condition that he not show up until there really was a war. He resented the idea that he might be jerked away from Mount Vernon once again, because of French stupidity. Hamilton, who engineered all this, became acting commander.63
Lafayette was confined to Holstein, working on his memoirs. Adrienne spent months in France after Anastasie’s marriage in the spring, alternately taking the cure at spas and lobbying to secure the Noailles estate and liberate her husband. Lafayette told Washington that spring that she remained too sick to take a sea voyage, but he should expect a visit from him and George by September. He also hinted that he hoped to heal the differences between the two countries. He had in fact been negotiating with the Directory, which wanted to end the crisis set off by the XYZ Affair, while Napoleon concentrated on an invasion of England. Rumors circulated that Lafayette would be appointed minister plenipotentiary to the United States. When those stories hit America, the Federalists objected because they thought Lafayette’s presence would suggest a favorable attitude on the part of the Directory toward the United States. Lafayette asked Hamilton what he thought. He advised him to stay away.64
In August 1798 Lafayette told Washington about Hamilton’s advice. In any event, he said, he could not go to America until Adrienne’s health improved. “How painful these delays are to me!” he cried. He looked toward “the beloved shores of America as the natural place of my retirement” and wanted nothing more than to own a small farm in Virginia. For the first time, he told Washington that he might go to America to work on a reconciliation between his “native and adoptive countries.”65
Three weeks later, after Lafayette heard about the provisional army, he advised Washington that the Directory was bent on keeping the peace with the United States. When he received that information, Washington told the secretary of state that he did not think France would attack America as long as it was at war with Britain. But he had also received a news clipping saying that his adopted son and godson were on their way to see him. He dreaded that they would be dragged into American politics. “On public, and his own private account,” he said, “I hoped this would not have happened while matters were in the train they are at present.” When a visitor who had returned from Europe showed up at Mount Vernon in November, Washington grilled him about Lafayette and was told that he was safe at Hamburg.66
That information was out of date. Washington expected to see Lafayette at any time, but he learned in December 1798 that he
had not sailed after all. Warning him to stay out of the partisan feuding in the United States, he assured him that his friendship had “undergone no diminution or change” and said that no one in America would receive Lafayette “with more ardent affection than I should after the differences between this country and France are adjusted” and peace was restored. Until that happened, he said candidly, it would be best if the younger man stayed in Europe.
Washington explained that if Lafayette walked onto the American scene while tensions were running high—or, worse, if a full-scale war broke out—he would find himself “in a situation in which no address or human prudence” could free him from embarrassment. “In a word you would lose the confidence of one party or the other, perhaps both, were you here under these circumstances.” Congress had repealed all treaties with France, and the naval Quasi War had grown hotter. Washington said that the hostility toward France in the United States arose from the subversive activities of French agents, which had backfired. He was furious. “You mentioned that the Directory is disposed to resolve our differences,” he snorted. “If that is the case, let them prove so with deeds!”67
Lafayette was shocked and hurt. The revolution he had started had come between him and his adoptive father. He had been rejected by both his countries, and he was an orphan again, for the first time since 1777. He had to face the fact—he could not go to Mount Vernon.
Hamilton confirmed it. “I join with you in regretting the misunderstanding between our two countries,” he told Lafayette sympathetically. “And you may be assured that we are sincere.” It was up to France to put an end to the dispute, “by reparation to our merchants for past injury” at the hands of her navy. If Lafayette went to America, he would end up torn between the two contending political factions. He should therefore “stand aloof.”68
Adopted Son Page 50