Part 8

Mr. Sumner was especially pleased at the appreciation of this Address as an effort against compromise,--shown by a letter from a citizen of Kansas, who was present:--

“How timely and impressively that bright example teaches adherence to Liberty and Principle, and resistance to concession and compromise, at the present crisis!”

A patriot citizen who heard it at Philadelphia, where it was given before an immense audience, wrote:--

“Your Lecture has done more good than words can tell. There is no such thing as calculating its value to our city.”

The _Pennsylvanian_ of Philadelphia, after entitling it “Clear Grit Abolitionism,” said:--

“The People’s Literary Institute Lecture, at Concert Hall, last evening, was by that perfect ensample of Abolitionism, Senator Sumner, of Massachusetts. The hall was crowded, negroes occupying the front seats and other prominent places. Sumner’s nominal subject was ‘Lafayette,’ but he made his sketch of the noble Marquis a vehicle for the expression of the most ardent wishes and aspirations after negro equality. The audience applauded the most radical passages, although a stray hiss now and then betrayed the whereabouts of a ‘Conservative.’”

ADDRESS.

MR. PRESIDENT,--I am to speak this evening of one who early consecrated himself to Human Rights, and throughout a long life became their representative, knight-errant, champion, hero, missionary, apostle,--who strove in this cause as no man in history has ever striven,--who suffered for it as few have suffered,--and whose protracted career, beginning at an age when others are yet at school, and continued to the tomb, where he tardily arrived, is conspicuous for the rarest fidelity, the purest principle, and the most chivalrous courage, whether civil or military. There is but one personage to whom this description is justly applicable, and you have anticipated me when I pronounce the name of Lafayette. As in Germany Jean Paul is known as “the Only One,” so would I hail Lafayette as “the Faithful One.” If Liberty be what philosophy, poetry, and the human heart all declare, then must we treasure the example of one who served her always with a lover’s fondness and with a martyr’s constancy, nor demand perfections which do not belong to human nature. It is enough for unstinted gratitude that he stood forth her steadfast friend, like the good angel,--

“unmoved, Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,--

trampling on all the blandishments of youth, of fortune, and of power, keeping himself sternly aloof whether from King or Emperor, and always insisting upon the same comprehensive cause,--with a soul as fearless and irreproachable as Bayard, from whom generals and kings received knighthood, as unbending as Cato, who singly stood out against Cæsar, and as gentle as that best loved disciple, who leaned on the bosom of the Saviour, and alone of all the Twelve followed him to the Cross.

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If anything could add to the interest which this unparalleled career is calculated to awaken, I should find it in special associations which I have enjoyed. Often, when in Paris halting about as an invalid, I turned from its crowded life to visit the simple tomb of Lafayette in the conventual cemetery of Picpus, watched by white-hooded nuns, within the circle of the old walls, where he lies by the side of his heroic wife, pattern of noblest womanhood. Gazing on this horizontal slab of red freestone, in shape like that of Albert Dürer in the republican graveyard of Nuremberg, bearing an inscription without title of any kind, and then casting my eyes upon the neighboring monuments, where every name has the blazon of prince or noble, I seemed to see before me that youthful, lifelong, and incomparable loyalty to a great cause with perfect consistency to the end, marking him a phenomenon of history, which will be my theme to-night. The interest inspired at the republican tomb was strengthened at Lagrange, the country home of Lafayette, a possession derived from the family of his wife, where he passed the last thirty years of life in patriarchal simplicity, surrounded by children and grandchildren, with happy guests, and where everything still bears witness to him.

Nor do I believe that my interest goes far beyond that of the American people, when I think how his name is a household word, dear to all alike, old and young. Even the list of post-offices in the United States shows no less than fifty with his venerated name, and eighteen with the name of Lagrange.

Just before leaving France, now a year ago, on a clear and lovely day of October, in company with a friend, I visited this famous seat, which at once reminded me of the prints of it so common at shop-windows in my childhood. It is a picturesque and venerable castle, with five round towers, a moat, a drawbridge, an arched gateway, ivy-clad walls, and a large court-yard within, embosomed in trees, except on one side, where a beautiful lawn spreads its verdure. Everything speaks to us. The castle itself is of immemorial antiquity,--supposed to have been built in the earliest days of the French monarchy, as far back as Louis le Gros. It had been tenanted by princes of Lorraine, and been battered by the cannon of Turenne, one of whose balls penetrated its thick masonry. The ivy so luxuriantly mantling the gate, with the tower by its side, was planted by the eminent British statesman, Charles Fox, on a visit during the brief peace of Amiens. The park owed much of its beauty to Lafayette himself. The situation harmonized with the retired habits which found shelter there from the storms of fortune. It is in the level district of Brie, famous for its cheese, and forming part of the province of Champagne, famous for its wine,--about forty-five miles to the east of Paris, remote from any high-road, and at some distance from the railway recently opened through the neighborhood, in a country rich with orchards and smiling with fertility of all kinds. The estate immediately about the castle contains six hundred acres, which in the time of Lafayette was enlarged by several outlying farms. The well-filled library occupied an upper room in one of the towers, and near a window overlooking the farm-yard still stood the desk at which Lafayette was in the habit of sitting, with the speaking-trumpet by which he made himself heard in the yard, and with the account-book of the farm lying open as he had left it. All about were souvenirs of our country, showing how it engaged his thoughts. The castle is now occupied by the family of one of his grandchildren, whose hospitable welcome to us as Americans gave token of their illustrious ancestor, hardly less than these precious memorials and the full-length portrait by Ary Scheffer which looked down from the walls.

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And now holding up to view a model of surpassing fidelity in support of Human Rights, I am not without hope that others may see the beauty of such a character and try to make it in some measure their own. There is need of it among us. We, too, must be faithful.

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Gilbert de Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, only child of an ancient house, was born 6th September, 1757, at the castle of Chavaniac, in the central and mountainous province of Auvergne, in France. He came into the world an orphan,--for his father, a colonel of grenadiers in the French army, had already perished at the Battle of Minden. The verses which once interested Burns and excited the youthful admiration of Scott, though suggested by a humbler lot, depict some of the circumstances which surrounded his:--

“Cold on Canadian hills or _Minden’s plain_, Perhaps that parent mourned her soldier slain, Bent o’er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, The big drops mingling with the milk he drew.”[53]

The mother died soon after, leaving her child alone in the world, with rank and fortune such as few possess.

In the Memoirs, written by his own hand, Lafayette mentions simply his birth, without allusion to family or ancestry. This was characteristic of one who had so completely renounced all such distinctions. But the temptations he overcame and the prejudices he encountered can be fully appreciated only when we know his origin. His family was not merely ancient and noble, but for generations historic. It had given to French renown a Marshal, who, after honorable service in Italian campaigns, fought by the side of the Maid of Orléans in the expulsion of the English from France; and it had added to the more refined glories of the nation an authoress of that name, the friend of Rochefoucauld and Madame de Sévigné, who shone by literary genius at the court of Louis the Fourteenth, and became an early example of what woman may accomplish: so that the young orphan bore a name which, in a land of hereditary distinctions, seemed to enlist him for their conservation, while it gave him everywhere an all-sufficient passport.

But as some are born poets and others are born mathematicians, the Marquis de Lafayette was born with instinctive fidelity to the great principles of Liberty and Equality, by the side of which all hereditary distinctions disappear. Liberty, he had the habit of saying, was with him a religion, a love, and a geometrical certainty; and this passion, thus sacred, ardent, and confident, was inborn, perpetual, and irresistible. While still a child in the seclusion of Auvergne, he sighed for dangerous adventure, and when at the age of eleven he was transferred to college at Paris, the soul of the young noble responded instinctively to all instances of republican virtue. In the child may be seen the man, and he delighted afterwards to remember that during those early years, when the heart showed itself as it was, in a school exercise describing “the perfect horse,” he lost the prize by picturing the noble animal as throwing his rider at sight of the whip. Nor did his ardent nature express itself in superficial sallies. At every period of life, and particularly in youth, he was grave and silent even to coldness,--thus in external manner differing from the giddy and ostentatious nobles of his day, as he contrasted with them in character.

An early marriage, at the age of sixteen, with the remarkable daughter of the ducal house of Noailles, enlarged his aristocratic connections, and completed all that heart could desire for happiness or worldly advancement. But the life of a courtier, even with the companionship of royal princes, did not satisfy his earnest nature, and he turned away from the grandeurs and follies of Versailles to follow in the steps of his father as captain in the French army. Stationed at Metz, a border fortification on the Rhenish frontier of France, an incident occurred which gave impulse and direction to his life.

The Duke of Gloucester, brother of King George the Third, smarting under slights at court on account of a marriage disagreeable to the King, turned his back upon England, and in his travels stopped at Metz, where he was welcomed at dinner by the commander of the garrison. At that table sat the youthful Lafayette, only nineteen years old, who there for the first time heard the story of the American “insurgents,” as they were called,--of their armed resistance to British troops, and of the Declaration of Independence. His whole nature was thrilled, and the passionate declamation against arbitrary power to which the English Duke gave vent, though stirred only by wounded pride and spite, fell like a spark upon his sincere and sensitive soul, already kindling with generous emotions, so that, before the dinner was ended, his resolution was fixed to cross the ocean and offer his sword to distant, unknown fellow-men struggling for liberty. This was in the autumn of 1776.[54] Hastening back to Paris, he lost no time in engaging with the American Commissioners there, who with grateful astonishment welcomed their romantic ally.

Meanwhile came tidings of melancholy reverses which followed the Declaration of Independence, and of the scanty forces of Washington tracking the snow with bloody feet, as they retreated through New Jersey,--seeming to announce that all was lost. The American Commissioners frankly confessed that they could not encourage Lafayette to proceed with his purpose. But his undaunted temper was quickened anew, and when they told him that with their damaged credit it was impossible to provide a vessel for his conveyance, he exclaimed: “Thus far you have seen my zeal only; now it shall be something more. I will purchase and equip a vessel myself. It is while danger presses that I wish to join your fortunes.” Noble words, worthy of immortality, and never to be heard without a throb by an American heart!

Before embarking, Lafayette, partly to mask his enterprise, and also in the hardihood of courage, visited England, where his wife’s uncle, the French ambassador, presented him to George the Third, who, unconscious of his purpose, said, “I hope you mean to stay some time in Britain”; to which he answered, that it was not in his power. “What obliges you to leave us?” asked the King. “Please your Majesty,” said our new ally, “I have a very particular engagement; and if your Majesty were aware of it, you would not desire me to stay.” During this visit everything was open to the youthful soldier, and he was even invited to attend the review of British troops about to embark for America. From instinctive delicacy he declined, thinking it not right to take advantage of a hospitable invitation to inspect troops against whom he was about to array himself in war. “But,” he added, in relating this incident, “I met them six months after at the Brandywine.”

Quitting England, he traversed France with secrecy and despatch to join his vessel, which was at a Spanish port, beyond French jurisdiction. His departure came like a bolt upon the English Court, which he had just left, also upon the French Court, which was not yet prepared for a break with England, and upon his most affectionate family, who were planning for him a tour in Italy, which in his busy life he never made; but his young wife, who suffered most, loved him too well not to partake his sentiments and to approve his generous resolution, even though it separated him from her. To illustrate the general sensation, I quote the words of the historian Gibbon, in a letter dated April 12, 1777. “We talk chiefly of the Marquis de Lafayette, who was here a few weeks ago. He is about twenty, with an hundred and thirty thousand livres a year, the nephew of Noailles, who is ambassador here. He has bought the Duke of Kingston’s yacht, and is gone to join the Americans.[55] His family interfered by peremptory command, and the French Government interfered by that arbitrary mandate, under seal of the King, known as _lettre-de-cachet_,--but, disregarding the one and evading the other, in the disguise of a courier, our devoted ally traversed the Pyrenees, and soon found himself with his companions in arms on board his vessel, which, on the 26th of April, 1777, set sail for America.

Undertaking this enterprise at a time when the sea and all beyond were little known, the youthful adventurer showed a heart of “triple oak.” Our admiration is enhanced, when we recall the charms of country, rank, and family left behind,--with perils of capture and war braved even before reaching the land,--and especially when we contemplate the motive in which this enterprise had its origin. Rarely has hero gone forth on so beautiful an errand; for he carried words of cheer to our fathers, then in despairing struggle for the Great Declaration, and opened the way for those fleets and armies of France soon after marshalled on our side; nor is it too much to say, that he was the good angel of Independence. His family correspondence, which has seen the light only since his death, exhibits his beautiful fidelity and the completeness of his dedication to our cause. In a letter to his distinguished father-in-law, announcing his purpose, he says of American interests, that they “will always be more dear to him than his own,” and then declares himself “at the height of joy at having found so fine an occasion to do something and to improve himself.”[56] In a letter to his wife, written on the voyage, under date of June 7, 1777, his sympathy with the great objects of the national contest is tenderly revealed. “I hope, for my sake,” he writes, in words worthy of everlasting memory, “that you will become a good American. This is a sentiment proper for virtuous hearts. Intimately allied to the happiness of the whole Human Family is that of America, destined to become the respectable and sure asylum of virtue, honesty, toleration, equality, and of a tranquil liberty.”[57] Where are nobler words of aspiration for our country than this simple testimony by a youth of nineteen, pouring out his heart to his wife of seventeen? Where in history are grander words from youth or man? For seven weeks laboring through the sea, yet sustained by thoughts like these, he arrived at last on the coast of South Carolina. It was dark, but, pushing ashore in a boat, and following the guidance of a light, he found himself under a friendly roof. His first word, as he touched the land, was a vow to conquer or perish with it.

The Continental Congress was then sitting at Philadelphia, and, without stopping for rest, the sea-worn voyager hastened to report himself there. Most of the way on horseback, for nine hundred miles, he journeyed on, enjoying the country in its native freshness, and the simple, cordial welcome which greeted him everywhere on the road. “The further North I advance,” thus he wrote to his wife, “the more I like this country and its people.”[58] He had already been struck by what to him were “black domestics who came to ask his orders.”[59] Then for the first time he looked upon a slave. His well-known sentiments, so constantly declared, show clearly how his candid nature must have been troubled. He had forsaken France, where, amidst gross inequalities of condition, this grossest was unknown,--where, in the descending ranks of the feudal hierarchy, there was no place for this degradation,--where, amidst unjust taxes and injurious privileges without number, every man had a right at least to his child, to his wife, and to himself,--and where the boast went forth, as in England, and was repeated by judicial tribunals, that the air was too pure for a slave. With heavenly generosity he had turned away from his own country to help the cause of Freedom in another hemisphere, and here he found man despoiled of all _personal_ rights, and even degraded to be property, by those whose own struggles merely for _political_ rights had thrilled the fibres of his being. Youthful, and little schooled as yet in the world, he must have recoiled instinctively, as this most dismal and incomprehensible inconsistency appeared before him. How faithfully he battled with the demon his life will show.

Arrived in Philadelphia, he announced that he had come to serve at his own expense and as volunteer. The Continental Congress, touched by the magnanimous devotion of the youthful stranger, and apprised of his distinguished connections at home, appointed him without delay Major-General in the army of the United States, where he took rank by the side of Gates and Greene, Lincoln and Lee. Born to exalted condition in an ancient monarchy, he found himself welcomed to the highest place in the military councils of a struggling republic, and this while still a youth under twenty,--younger than Fox, younger than Pitt, when they astonished the world by their precocious parliamentary powers,--younger than Condé, in his own beautiful France, on the field of Rocroi. And his modesty was not less eminent than his post. To Washington, who made apologies for exhibiting his troops before a French officer, he replied with interesting simplicity, “I have come to learn, and not to teach.”[60] The Commander-in-Chief, usually so grave, was won at once to that perpetual friendship which endured unbroken as long as life,--showing itself now in tears of joy and then in tears of grief,--watching the youthful stranger with paternal care,--sharing with him table, tent, and on the field of Monmouth the same cloak for a couch,--following his transcendent fortunes, now on giddiest heights and then in gloom, with constant, unabated attachment,--corresponding with him at all times,--addressing him in terms of unwonted endearment as “the man he loved,”[61] and saying again that he “had not words to express his affection, were he to attempt it,”[62]--sending kindly sympathy to that devoted wife in her unparalleled affliction, and pleading across sea and continent with the Austrian despot for his release from the dungeons of Olmütz.

It is much to have inspired the most tender friendship which history records in the life of Washington. There were with us other strangers, scarcely less brilliant than Lafayette. There was Kosciusko, the Pole, who afterwards played so great a part in his own country--Steuben, the German, who did so much for the discipline of our troops,--De Kalb, the gallant soldier, who died for us at Camden,--Rochambeau, the distinguished commander of the French forces, compeer with Washington at Yorktown,--Lauzun, the sparkling courtier, whose fascinations were acknowledged by Marie Antoinette,--Ségur, the high-bred youthful soldier and future diplomatist,--Montesquieu, grandson of the immortal author of the “Spirit of Laws,”--Saint-Simon, whose military and ancestral honors are now lost in his fame as social reformer,--also the unfortunate Count de Loménie, with the Prince de Broglie of the old monarchy, and Berthier, afterwards a prince of the Empire. All these were in our revolutionary contest gathered about Washington; but Lafayette alone obtained place in his heart. Friendship is always a solace and delight; but such a friendship was a testimony. Let it ever be said that Washington chose Lafayette as friend, while Lafayette was to him always pupil, disciple, son.

His intrepidity found early occasion for display at the Battle of the Brandywine, where, attempting to rally our unlucky troops, he was severely wounded in the leg, and thus at once, by suffering for us, increased his titles to regard. As he became known, his simple and bountiful nature awakened the attachment of officers and men, so that in writing to his wife he was able to relieve her anxieties by saying that he had “the friendship of the army in gross and in detail,” and also what he calls “a tender union with the most respectable, the most admirable of men, General Washington.”[63] Nor was this unnatural, when we consider how completely he became American in dress, food, and habits, as he was already American in heart. Avoiding no privation or fatigue, this juvenile patrician, educated to indulgence in all the forms that wealth and privilege could supply, showed himself more frugal and more austere even than his republican associates, living sometimes for months on a single ration. The confidence of Congress soon followed, and by special resolution Washington was requested to place him at the head of an independent command.