#117 Lafayette Forever
It is said that in the United States, you are always within walking distance from a place named after the Marquis de Lafayette. Streets, towns, parks, and schools across the country bear his name—a remarkable legacy for a Frenchman who never held power there and wasn’t even American.
Lafayette earned that honor the hard way—by showing up when it mattered most. Born (hold on!) Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette in 1757, he was orphaned young but inherited unimaginable wealth and married into even more. Instead of a life comfortably navigating the intrigues of the Bourbon court, at 19, he defied orders, bought a ship, and crossed the Atlantic to fight in a revolution that wasn’t his. Where most sought glory, Lafayette brought something rarer—commitment. He fought at Brandywine, wintered at Valley Forge, and played a key role in securing French support, which ultimately turned the tide against the British. It’s no surprise that George Washington became a lifelong friend—Lafayette earned it.
I recently finished Mike Duncan’s biography of Lafayette (four stars), Hero of Two Worlds. As with any hero, it’s the contradictions that make Lafayette interesting. For all his devotion to liberty, Lafayette never fully reconciled the fact that the America he loved was built on slavery. He owned enslaved people himself—he was no saint—but the injustice bothered him deeply. Unlike many of his peers, he didn’t just wring his hands about it. He lobbied his powerful friends (with limited success), pushed for emancipation schemes, and even attempted to fund a colony where formerly enslaved people could live freely. It cost him politically, especially among America’s slaveholding elite, but Lafayette’s belief in liberty wasn’t selective—it was unusually consistent.
After America, Lafayette tried to bring those ideals home. His early efforts in the French Revolution echoed the hopeful optimism of 1776, but France was not America. In Europe, the fight for liberty ended in the cold efficiency of the guillotine. Lafayette fell from grace, spent years imprisoned in Austria, and returned to a country where the revolution had devoured many of its children. Still, he never abandoned the cause. When he returned to the United States in 1824 for a grand tour, he found something remarkable: the nation he had helped to create had not forgotten him. Across all 24 states, crowds lined the streets to cheer the last living general of the Revolution. They named cities and towns after him. They still do.
If you want the world’s gratitude, there are two ways to get it. One is to force it down people’s throat—a strategy that in Lafayette’s time often led to either a swift beheading or the loss of an empire. The other is to stand for something that is larger than you. Lafayette chose the latter. His legacy isn’t perfect—whose is?—but by showing up, by believing in liberty even when it was inconvenient, and by never quite giving up, he secured something more lasting than power. Long after his time, the world still remembers his name. And, in America at least, you’re probably never far from a reminder.
— Jasper