In the same year, Lafayette: Dow, Lafayette and Slavery, 6.
Description of a Slave Ship: “Description d’un Navire Négrier,” Cornell, box 2, folder 29.
abolitionist contemporaries: For an excellent overview, see Davis, The Problem of Slavery.
“final purposes”: The Compleated Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin, ed. Mark Skousen (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2007), 2:382.
like Jefferson, who wrote: On Jefferson’s proposals, see Christa Dierksheide, “ ‘The Great Improvement and Civilization of That Race’: Jefferson and the ‘Amelioration’ of Slavery, ca. 1770–1826,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 6, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 165–97.
“the double voice of self-interest”: LAAR, 5:172.
acquired two properties in Cayenne: The sales contracts for the properties and slaves are housed in ANOM COL/C14/81 F° 9 and FR ANOM COL/C14/81 F° 18.
They ranged in age: Geneste, “Liste des nègres … ,” Cornell, box 2, folder 18. Dow, Lafayette and Slavery, 6, reports that, “according to Thomas Clarkson … Lafayette liberated all of the slaves on his Cayenne plantation toward the end of 1789.” However, Clarkson was mistaken. I thank Miranda Spieler for calling my attention to this fact. On slavery in French Guiana, see Miranda Spieler, Empire and Underworld: Captivity in French Guiana (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). As discussed above, evidence that Lafayette never freed his slaves may be found in the archives at Cornell and ANOM. The facts are also presented accurately in John T. Gillard, “Lafayette, Friend of the Negro,” Journal of Negro History 19, no. 4 (October 1934), 364, and in Liliane Willens, “Lafayette’s Emancipation Experiment in French Guiana—1786–1792,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 242 (1986): 345–62.
“to free my negroes”: Lafayette to Washington, February 6, 1786, PGWC, 3:546.
“would to God a like spirit would diffuse”: Washington to Lafayette, May 10, 1786, PGWC, 4:44.
Oneidas, whose young men: Glatthaar and Martin, Forgotten Allies, 208–15.
“fell in with the Marquis”: James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, New York, September 15, 1784, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 7:416.
whose diary offers: The following description of the journey is based on Barbé-Marbois’s “Journal of His Visit to the Territory of the Six Nations,” LAAR, 5:245–53. Quotes are as translated by the editors.
Shakers: My understanding of the Shakers is deeply indebted to Stephen J. Stein, The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).
“My companions”: Lafayette to Adrienne, October 4, 1784, LAAR, 5:416.
fascinated by Native American: The classic text on French attitudes toward America in general, and Native Americans in particular, is Durand Echeverria, Mirage in the West: A History of the French Image of American Society to 1815 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). More recent treatments include Aurelian Craiutu and Jeffrey C. Isaac, eds., America Through European Eyes: British and French Reflections on the New World from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), and Philippe Roger, The American Enemy: The History of French Anti-Americanism, trans. Sharon Bowman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). A wide selection of documents, images, and objects on the theme are published in Betty-Bright P. Low, France Views America, 1765–1815, exhibit catalog (Wilmington, DE: Eleutherian Mills Historical Library, 1978).
“noble savage”: On the concept of the noble savage and its use (and misuse) by anthropologists, see Ter Ellingson, The Myth of the Noble Savage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
“the respect that we have”: Peter Jimack, ed., A History of the Two Indies: A Translated Selection of Writings from Raynal’s “Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements des Européens dans les Deux Indes” (Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2006), 211.
“One calls sauvages all the Indian peoples”: Encyclopédie, 14:729.
“five hundred men, women, and children”: Mémoires, 1:43.
“Europeans who are curious”: Our Revolutionary Forefathers: The Letters of François, Marquis de Barbé-Marbois During His Residence in the United States as Secretary of the French Legation, 1779–1789, trans. and ed. and with an introduction by Eugene Parker Chase (1929; repr., Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), 189.
address the assembly: The following description is based on “Relation of What Pass’d at the Opening of the Treaty Between the United States and the Indian Nations at Fort Schuyler, October 3, 1784,” Connecticut Courant (November 30, 1784): 1. Similar reports appeared in many other papers.
“of the immoderate stress”: Madison to Jefferson, October 17, 1784, LAAR, 5:273.
Lee did not hesitate: Lafayette wrote to Adrienne that Lee, who “had no desire to be indebted to me,” had observed “that the sauvages had been too occupied with me to pay attention to the commissioners.” Lafayette to Adrienne, October 4, 1784, LAAR, 5:416.
“was the only conspicuous figure”: Madison to Jefferson, October 17, 1784, LAAR, 5:273.
“I take him to be as amiable”: Ibid., 274. Eugene Parker Chase observes that the phrase “as his vanity will admit” was stricken from the letter by a later hand. Chase, Our Revolutionary Forefathers, 274. It is omitted from the transcription in Writings of James Madison, 2:76, and replaced with “as can be imagined.”
“personal credit with the sauvages”: Lafayette to Adrienne, October 4, 1784, LAAR, 5:416.
“beautiful”: Nolan, Lafayette in America, 228.
first histories: For an overview of Ramsay and Warren, see Eve Kornfeld, Creating an American Culture, 1775–1800: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 39–48. On Gordon, see George William Pilcher, “William Gordon and the History of the American Revolution,” Historian 34, no. 3 (May 1972): 447–64.
“an eternal Talker”: Adams as cited in Pilcher, “William Gordon,” 452, note 11.
“recollect the train”: James McHenry to George Washington, New York, August 1, 1785, PGWC, 3:166.
“In certain places”: William Gordon to Washington, September 26, 1785; Washington to William Gordon, December 6, 1785; William Gordon to Washington, February 16, 1786, PGWC. On the role of vegetation in forging the political and intellectual culture of the early American republic, see Andrea Wulf, Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011).
Whether because the author mellowed: Samuel Adams and John Hancock, however, were both dismayed by Gordon’s unflattering descriptions of their actions. See Pilcher, “William Gordon,” 462–63.
CHAPTER 10: AN “AMERICAN” NOBLEMAN IN PARIS
Lafayette’s financial problems: Lafayette’s receipts and expenses during the 1780s are thoroughly documented in LOC, reel 8, folders 100–102a. All figures and quotations in my discussion of Lafayette’s finances are found in this collection unless otherwise noted.
Hôtel de Noailles: Adolphe Berty, Topographie historique du vieux Paris, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1885), 1:298; Plan et façade en six planches, de l’Hôtel, rue St. Honoré à Paris, appartenant au très-honorable Francis Henry Egerton, des Ducs de Bridgewater, prince du S.E.R. &c. &c. &c. Paris: 1830.
“a house which, if not the most”: Letter from Lafayette to Prince de Poix, Hartford, October 12, 1784, excerpted in Charles Brabaint, ed., La Fayette exhibit catalog (Paris: Archives Nationales, 1957), 166.
Like Turgot’s, Lafayette’s was: For a thorough discussion of the area in general, and of Lafayette’s home at 119 Rue de Lille, see La Rue de Lille: Hôtel de Salm (Paris: Délégation à l’Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris; Musée de la Légion d’Honneur; Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie du VIIe Arrondissement, 1983).
Adrien Mouton: For a summary of Mouton’s career, see Michel Gallet, Les architectes parisiens du XVIIIe siècle: Dictionnaire biographique et
critique (Paris: Mengès, 1995), 377–78.
“it is necessary”: Anatole de Montaiglon and Jules Guiffrey, eds., Correspondance des directeurs de l’Académie de France à Rome avec les surintendants des bâtiments (Paris: Noël Charavay, 1902), vol. 12 (1764–1774), 238. See John Goodman, “Jansenism, ‘Parlementaire’ Politics, and Dissidence in the Art World of Eighteenth-Century Paris: The Case of the Restout Family,” Oxford Art Journal 18, no. 1 (1995): 74–95, esp. 83–84.
“barbarously murdered”: February 21, 1785, David Grayson Allen, ed., et al., Diary of John Quincy Adams (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1982), 1:225.
special dispensation releasing: Lafayette to Elias Boudinot, March 16, 1785, New Jersey Historical Society. Photostat. Gottschalk, box 54, folder 1.
“Bernard Molitor”: Ulrich Leben, Molitor: Ebeniste from the Ancien Regime to the Bourbon Restoration (London: Wilson, 1992), 185.
“mahogany bookcase”: The inventories and sales of items in Lafayette’s home on the Rue de Bourbon are found in “Vente du Mobilier de l’Émigré La Fayette” and other documents housed in the Archives de la Seine, Paris, DQ10, carton 792.
“the true Cincinnatus”: Lafayette to Adrienne, August 20, 1784, LOC, reel 31, folder 354.
“I have discovered”: Lafayette to Adrienne, Church’s Tavern, October 10, 1784, LAAR, 5:417.
quick note to William Temple Franklin: Lafayette to William Temple Franklin, November 19, 1783. Photostat. Gottschalk, box 53, folder 10.
four large mirrors: On August 25, 1795, the commune’s representatives itemized every mirror. Eighteen rooms were outfitted with mirrors, valued at 149,010 livres. Archives de la Seine, Paris, DQ10, carton 792.
English was the language: Abigail Adams Smith and Caroline Amelia Smith de Windt, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, Daughter of John Adams, Second President of the United States (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 1:49.
invitations preprinted in English: Lafayette to Franklin, March 9, 1784, Gottschalk, box 53, folder 11.
“life of ceremony and parade”: Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, April 15, 1785, Adams Family Correspondence, 6:84.
“dinner was so perfectly to my taste”: Colonel Smith to Abigail Adams Smith, May 5, 1787, Correspondence of Miss Adams, 1:132.
“I should always take pleasure”: Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, April 15, 1785, Adams Family Correspondence, 6:84.
“the fondness that Madame”: Correspondence of Miss Adams, 1:49.
“I shall lose part”: Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, May 8, 1785, Adams Family Correspondence, 6:120.
“as a favourite Servant”: Lafayette to Jeremiah Wadsworth, April 16, 1785, LAAR, 5:319.
“I might well bring back”: Lafayette to Adrienne, LAAR, 5:417.
“the difficulty that M. le M[arqu]is”: Barbé-Marbois, LAAR, 5:410.
“the whole family who are Oneidas”: Lafayette to Jeremiah Wadsworth, April 16, 1785, LAAR, 5:319. A slightly different version of the story is told in Amelia Cornelius with the assistance of Todd Larkin, “The Archiquette Genealogy,” in The Oneida Indian Journey: From New York to Wisconsin, 1784–1860, ed. Laurence M. Hauptman, L. Gordon McLester, and the Oneida History Conference Committee (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 126–27. This essay mentions “the children of Lafayette’s former clerk, a man named Otsiquette, and an Oneida woman named Sarah Hanyost. Otsiquette had long before returned to France, leaving the boys and Sarah behind.” It indicates that Lafayette had also hoped to bring Peter’s brother, Edward (Neddy), as well, but that Neddy had run away rather than be taken to Europe.
handful of small receipts: LOC, folder 102a.
“a sauvage from America”: Xavier de Schomberg as quoted in Agénor Bardoux, La jeunesse de La Fayette, 1757–1792 (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1892), 194.
“rich Indian dresses”: Ledyard, 265–66.
“especially colorful description”: Ange Achille Charles, comte de Neuilly, Dix années d’émigration: souvenirs et correspondance du comte de Neuilly (Paris, Douniol, 1865), 10–11.
“Four Iroquois Kings”: The London visits of the Four Iroquois Kings in 1710 and Mai in 1776 have received a considerable amount of attention. My understanding of these events is particularly indebted to Kate Fullagar, “ ‘Savages That Are Come Among Us’: Mai, Bennelong, and British Imperial Culture, 1774–1795,” The Eighteenth Century 49, no. 3 (2008): 211–37, and Joseph R. Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
reported in American papers: “News from New York,” Massachusetts Centinel ( July 30, 1788): 157. The article, which seems to have been published first by the Centinel, was reprinted verbatim in papers including The Cumberland Gazette, The Hampshire Chronicle, and The Pennsylvania Gazette.
“this young aboriginal”: This article appeared in at least two papers under two different headlines: “Providence,” Norwich Packet (August 7, 1788): 3; “New-York,” Pennsylvania Mercury (August 16, 1788): 3.
“a scarlet coat”: excerpts from the journal of Susan Woodrow Lear as published in In the Words of Women: The Revolutionary War and the Birth of the Nation, 1765–1799, eds. Louise V. North, Janet M. Wedge, and Landa M. Freeman (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011), 239.
died of pleurisy: Gazette of the United States (March 28, 1792): 383.
“highly cultivated”: Van der Kemp to Mappa, as cited in Gottschalk, Lafayette Between the American and the French Revolution, 434. Although Gottschalk concluded that two Native Americans lived with Lafayette on the Rue de Bourbon, there appears to have been only one. A notice from Paris published in the London-based Gentleman’s Magazine and dated January 30, 1785, announced, “The Marquis de la Fayette is returned from Philadelphia, and brought with him a young sauvage of twelve years old.” Lafayette intended to provide the young man with “a very good education,” according to the Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle 55 (1785): 148. Lafayette did, in fact, return with a young American whom he intended to provide with a good education, but the boy, James Edward Caldwell, was not of Native American descent.
“friendly controversy”: Louis Gottschalk, Lady-in-Waiting: The Romance of Lafayette and Aglaé de Hunolstein (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1939), viii.
“I shall spare you also the confession”: LAAR, 1:5–6. Although the editors of LAAR refer to this portion of Lafayette’s memoirs as “Memoir of 1779,” they note that the first four pages were written in the nineteenth century. LAAR, 1:12.
telltale letter on March 27, 1783: A French transcript of the letter is published as Appendix III in Gottschalk, Lady-in-Waiting, 128–29, with a photostat of the original inserted between these pages.
The author Stéphanie Félicité: Mémoires inédits de Madame la comtesse de Genlis sur le dix-huitième siècle et la Révolution française depuis 1756 jusqu’à nos jours, 10 vols. (Paris: Ladvocat, 1825), 2:272. I was directed to this source by Gottschalk, Close of the American Revolution, 419, note 19.
“pretty” and “amiable”: Gottschalk, Lady-in-Waiting, 97.
“just to see the portrait that I was making”: Vigée-LeBrun, Souvenirs, 2:287.
“Rumor has it that Monsieur the Comte”: Mémoires secrets, 34:286.
CHAPTER 11: A POLITICAL EDUCATION
“the Happiness of 26 millions of People”: Lafayette to Washington, January 13, 1787, PGWC, 4:515.
“French Prerevolution”: The term was coined by Jean Egret, The French Pre-Revolution, 1787–1788, trans. Wesley D. Camp (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). My understanding of this crucial period is indebted to Egret and to Vivian R. Gruder, The Notables and the Nation: The Political Schooling of the French, 1787–1788 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).
“whose principles are the most”: Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787. The Thomas Jefferson Papers, Series 1, General Correspondence, 1651–1827, Library of Congress. On Jefferson’s thoughts on the Assembly of Notables, see William Howa
rd Adams, The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 259–69.
“Having a mild and timid character, uneducated”: Mémoires secrets, 34:184–85.
“King’s diversions”: The following description of the assembly’s first session is drawn from Procès-verbal de l’Assemblée de Notables tenue à Versailles en l’année MDCCLXXXVII (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1787), 32–42.
Measuring 120 feet long: Mémoires secrets, 34:147. For the details of the renovations conducted in preparation for the assembly, see Armand Brette, Histoire des édifices où ont siégé les assemblées parlementaires de la Révolution française et de la première République (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1902), 1:19–34.
“any frugal-minded citizen”: As translated in Jeremy D. Popkin, ed. and trans., Panorama of Paris (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 190–91.
“tossing several millions”: Mémoires secrets, 34:147.
“Gentlemen”: The discourse pronounced by Louis XVI is reproduced in Procès-verbal de l’Assemblée de Notables, 42.
“the most remarkable effect of this convention”: Jefferson to Abigail Adams, February 22, 1787, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 1784–1787, vol. 4, ed. Paul Leicester Ford (New York: Putnam, 1894), 370. On Jefferson’s thoughts on the Assembly of Notables, see 259–69.
“that a good punster would disarm”: Jefferson to Abigail Adams, February 22, 1787, Ford, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 4:370.
He entered its deliberations: Except where noted, my understanding of, and quotations regarding, Lafayette’s participation in the second bureau are indebted to Jean Egret, “La Fayette dans la première Assemblée des Notables (février–mai 1787),” Annales historiques de la Révolution française 24 (1952): 1–31. Egret’s analysis is based on the bureau’s unpublished minutes, held at the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal in Paris.
The Marquis Page 43