Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

“That, to me, is the quintessential experience of living in the United States: constantly worrying whether or not the country is about to fall apart.”

Vowell draws frequent parallels between the political infighting of the past and that of modern-day politicians. During the United States’ formation, a British victory would have ended the American experiment before it began. But Vowell also views modern America as being in a similarly tenuous state. She refers to government shutdowns, constant bickering, and instability in the presidency as constant causes of concern.

“Ideas, when implemented, turn into precedents with unpredictable and potentially disturbing consequences.”

Vowell describes the effect that the American Revolution had on America’s French allies. The French looked at the revolt against the British Empire as an inspiration for the French Revolution. However, the French Revolution quickly devolved into senseless bloodshed and barbarity. The French leaders were pursuing the same ideals as the Founding Fathers in the beginning of the conflict, but the Jacobites soon perverted the revolutionary principles, leading to The Terror, a time when more than 800 executions by guillotine took place each month in France.

“As a Frenchman who represented neither North nor South, East nor West, left nor right, Yankees nor Red Sox, Lafayette has always belonged to all of us.”

Throughout the book, Vowell reiterates the idea that Lafayette was one of the few things nearly all Americans could agree on. He was not a polarizing figure. Disagreement is, according to Vowell, such a staple of American culture and democracy that any person upon whom most can agree is worthy of attention.

“I see plainly that America can defend herself if proper measures are taken,” he wrote, adding ominously, “and now I begin to fear she should be lost by herself and her own sons.”

Shortly into the war, there were congressmen and military officials condemning George Washington for losing several battles. They began to plot against him, with an aim of replacing him as the leader of the Continental Army. Lafayette writes to him, worried that even if the British can be defeated, America’s greatest enemies might come from misguided patriots within its own borders. The thought of traitors bringing down the new country before it could win the war appalled him.

“While history might be full of exemplary fathers, recorded history is not where to find them.”

Lafayette made the military campaign in America his priority. He abandoned Adrienne, his young, pregnant wife, to join the fight. When his daughter Henriette was born, he barely noticed. When Henriette died, he expressed sadness in the form of letters but did not leave America to comfort his wife. Lafayette was a brave man who was eager to win glory, but he did not care for his family in obvious ways.

“If two of the most distinguished, dedicated, and thoughtful public servants in the history of this republic could not find a way to agree to disagree, how can we expect the current crop of congressional blockheads to get along?”

Branch Petition, the colonists’ final declaration of loyalty to King George III. Adams and Dickinson were both level-headed, methodical thinkers and usually treated each other with mutual respect. But they could not always agree. Vowell does not believe that the current state of the “blockheads” in Congress should give Americans any optimism about the possibility of compromises on behalf of the American public.

“Not until Theodore Roosevelt resigned his prestigious position as assistant secretary of the navy in 1898 to fight with the Rough Riders in the Cuban dirt would there be a rich man as weirdly rabid to join American forces in combat as Lafayette was. The two shared a child’s ideal of manly military glory. Though in Lafayette’s defense, he was an actual teenager, unlike the thirty-nine-year-old TR.”

The dream of military glory consumed Lafayette. As he showed when abandoning Adrienne, it is unlikely that anything could have stopped him from joining the American cause. Vowell compares him to Theodore Roosevelt, though the latter’s lust for fighting could not be explained by youth, as he was a middle-aged man when he fought in Cuba. Lafayette’s passion was a combination of romanticism, youth, idealism, and the desire to create a legacy for himself.

“The words Lafayette used to describe that triumph—'I did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence’—applied to getting his way regarding America as well. Perhaps the most emblematic anecdote foretelling Lafayette’s stubborn refusal to give up his American dream was the boyhood story about how one day, one of his Parisian schoolteachers was talking up the virtues of an obedient horse. According to Lafayette, ‘I described the perfect horse as one which, at the sight of the whip, had the sense to throw his rider to the ground before he could be whipped.’”

There are few signs that anyone or anything could have steered Lafayette away from his adventure in America. Even as a child, he admired people and animals that rebelled against authority. He saw perfection even in a horse that was aggressive enough to topple its rider before it could be punished, just to strike a blow of defiance and assert itself. He knew that his actions would not all be viewed favorably, but it did not matter as much as chasing glory did.

“Lafayette, on the other hand, was more of a make-your-own-destiny type of fellow, disobeying orders from the king and abandoning a pregnant girl for an entirely optional adventure.”

Vowell contrasts the motives for joining the war held by George Washington and Lafayette. The people chose Washington to lead the war effort and, later, the country. Lafayette may have held the democratic ideals he claimed to be driven by, but many of his actions were in service to a pursuit of personal glory. He viewed the American Revolution as his best chance to create a legend around himself.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”

This quote is from Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had conflicted views about the necessity of war. The quote appears on a plaque in a Quaker peace garden, adjacent to a monument of Lafayette. The Quakers believe that no violence is justifiable. Eisenhower believed that sometimes war could not be avoided, but that there were times when only armed conflict could produce a result like toppling the Nazi regime. The plaque reinforces the idea that is also raised during the French Revolution—that every cent spent on military power is a cent that cannot be used to help those in need.

“We understand our history as war.”

During the Quaker service, John Densmore tells Vowell that Americans have a myopic view of history. He says that Americans have little understanding of their country beyond its participation in wars. He believes this embeds ideas about the necessity of violence and revolution into American patriotism. If Americans view their history as one of war, Densmore worries that they may always see pacifism as weak.

“While the melodrama of hucking crates of tea into Boston Harbor continues to inspire civic-minded hotheads to this day, it’s worth remembering the hordes of stoic colonial women who simply swore off tea and steeped basil leaves in boiling water to make the same point. What’s more valiant: littering from a wharf or years of doing chores and looking after children from dawn to dark without caffeine?”

The women in the book play peripheral roles to those of the men, but they are often more reasonable than their counterparts. The men behind the Revolutionary War—and romantic thrill seekers like Lafayette—were predisposed to action rather than thoughtfulness. Many of the mistakes made in the campaigns of the war could have been avoided with patience and thought.

“Steuben explained to his friend, “You say to your soldier, ‘Do this,’ and he does it; but I am obliged to say, ‘This is the reason why you ought to do that,’ and then he does it.”

French officers claimed that American soldiers had a different outlook on war than any other men the French had fought with previously. The highly disciplined British and French troops stood on ceremony, discipline, and an unquestioning obedience to military orders. The Americans preferred to know why they were being asked to do something before acting on orders. Once they understood the rationale for an action, they committed to it fully.

“If there is anything to be learned from the conspiracy—other than when in doubt, bet on George Washington—it is to beware the pitfalls of certainty.”

After the Conway Cabal failed, the men who had plotted against Washington witnessed the end of their careers and aspirations. Vowell presents political alliances based on unlikely outcomes—such as Washington being removed from the presidency—as a high-risk game that can ruin the losers. One of Washington’s strengths was that he was able to question himself, his motives, and the appearance of absolute truths. The men who perpetrated the Conway Cabal were prematurely confident in their abilities and paid the price for it.

“Was Independence for some of us more valuable than freedom for all of us?”

Earlier in the book, Vowell reminds readers that the founders of America were also men who agreed that black people were only three-fifths of a person. The founders were quick to rally around the word independence but did not apply it fairly or judiciously. In Vowell’s view, slavery remains America’s greatest hypocrisy.

“You know your country has a checkered past when you find yourself sitting around pondering the humanitarian upside of sticking with the British Empire.”

England abolished slavery more than three decades before President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Vowell points out that, had America reconciled with the British Empire, the American slave trade would have vanished 30 years earlier. The so-called War for Independence did not take the independence of slaves into account, and slavery was a more problematic ethical issue than taxation without representation, the ostensible cause of the war.

“It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights,” Washington wrote. “For, happily, the Government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

George Washington writes to a Hebrew congregation at Newport. He believed that tolerance was not a virtue because it implies that a superior group is putting up with an inferior one. He tried to explain that the Bill of Rights would be good for the Jewish population because it would guarantee that the government would never assist one group in persecuting another and would expose tolerance as a sham.

“Half the Americans say I am passionately fond of my country, and the other half say that since the arrival of the French ships, I have become mad…Betwixt ourselves, they are a little in the right; I never felt so strongly what may be called national pride.”

After d’Estaing’s fleet was damaged in a storm, d’Estaing took his ships to Boston for repairs rather than participating in the action against Newport. American military leaders negatively viewed d’Estaing’s decision, and public sentiment towards the French grew bitter. This letter from Lafayette to Adrienne is one of the only examples in which Lafayette was compelled to defend his country, rather than America.

“In a free and republican government, you cannot restrain the voice of the multitude; every man will speak as he thinks, or, more properly, without thinking, and consequently will judge at effects without attending to the causes.”

Washington replies to Lafayette’s complaints about the Americans’ vilification of d’Estaing. Washington knows that by appealing to Lafayette’s sense of idealism, he can placate his bitterness over the American military’s sudden unhappiness with the French. On a larger scale, Washington takes the opportunity to once again reinforce his ideas of what a truly republican government should be.

“It is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind, that no nation is to be trusted further that it is bound by its interest.”

Washington was an idealist, but he was also prone to a well-earned pessimism when it came to human greed and ambition. He knew that unless people acted out of proper motives, the pursuit of self-interest could corrupt any organization, system, or government. He did not believe that any nation, including America, deserved unconditional trust, because each nation is made up of fallible people.

“If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

King George III was impressed upon learning that George Washington wanted to return to life as a farmer after the war, rather than making himself a king or a dictator. Washington would follow through on his wishes; later, after serving two terms as president, he resigned to return to a quiet life on his farm at Mount Vernon. Unlike Lafayette, Washington never viewed the Revolutionary War as an opportunity for glory or power. It was a means to achieve what he saw as a necessary goal, so he served until he felt he was no longer needed.

“Americans celebrate Independence Day as opposed to Yorktown Day. Who wants to barbecue a hot dog and ponder how we owe our independence to the French navy?”

Yorktown Day celebrates the day that General Cornwallis surrendered his troops at Yorktown. Vowell explains that without the French naval intervention during the immediately preceding battles, America may have lost the war. At the very least, the war could have been prolonged for a great deal longer. American celebrations of independence do not focus on the critical role that the French played in helping win America’s freedom from the British Empire.

“It does seem eerie how one day in 1824 two-thirds of the population of New York City was lining up to wave hello to Lafayette and nineteen decades go by and all that’s left of his memory is the name of a Cajun college town.”

During Lafayette’s return tour to America as an old man, many thousands of Americans visited the harbor to watch him arrive. They threw a parade in his honor and composed songs celebrating his achievements as a part of America’s victory. Vowell explains that she initially became interested in writing this book because so few modern Americans, in her view, know Lafayette’s name or why he was important in America’s history.