Lafayette by Harlow Giles Unger Read Free Book Online

coaxed the prison commander to let her write to specific family members, whom she had to identify with each letter to obtainapproval. He read every word she wrote. He rejected a letter to her son, to prevent a description of Olmütz from reaching America and embarrassing the Austrian government. Europeans accepted the horrors of prison dungeons with far more equanimity than Americans, who had not yet built such institutions and considered public humiliation in the stocks harsh enough punishment for most crimes. So Adrienne wrote instead to her sister Pauline and to her aunt, the comtesse de Tessé, and they, in turn, forwarded descriptions of the Prisoners of Olmütz to increasingly noisy Fayettistes in England, France, and the United States who demanded the Lafayettes’ release.
    The Lafayettes received occasional news from the outside world. In a severely censored letter from Pauline, Adrienne learned that her son had arrived safely in Boston in September. What she did not know was that her son’s arrival plunged his godfather, the American president, into a potentially embarrassing political and diplomatic situation that posed dangers to the Lafayette family. Earlier that summer, the American Senate had ratified a treaty with Britain expanding trade and giving America’s former oppressor most-favored-nation trade status. The treaty infuriated the French government, which saw it as an abrogation of their own treaty of amity and commerce with the United States. In Paris, the French foreign minister threatened to seize American ships bound to and from Britain, and Washington recalled American ambassador Monroe, who had been instrumental in obtaining Adrienne’s release from prison. If, in addition, Washington publicly offered sanctuary to Lafayette’s son in the American capital, the French government would almost certainly interpret it as a direct insult and a hostile act.
    In addition to the diplomatic hazards in Philadelphia, there were health hazards. The capital was at the epicenter of the worst yellow fever epidemic in American history; it had killed as much as 10 percent of the population from New York to Norfolk, Virginia, but had spared Boston and most of New England. Washington decided to leave the boy in New England until the government recessed later in the year and he could move to Mount Vernon with little or no fanfare. To fulfill Adrienne’s wish that George “resume his studies . . . in obscurity,” Washington asked Massachusetts senator George Cabot to enroll young Lafayette incognito at Harvard College, “the expense of which as also of every other means for his support, I will pay.” In a letter marked “private and confidential,” Washington gave Cabot
    the most unequivocal assurance of my standing in the place and becoming to him a father, friend, protector and supporter . . . my friendship for his father has increased in the ratio of his misfortune . . . [but] for prudential motives, as they may relate to himself, his mother and friends, whom he has left behind, and to my official character, it would be best not to make these sentiments public; and of course it would be ineligible that he shouldcome to the seat of government where all the foreign characters (particularly those of his own nation) are residents, until it is seen what opinion will be excited by his arrival. . . . Let me in a few words declare that I
will
be
his friend
, but the manner of becoming so considering the obnoxious light in which his father is viewed by the French Government, and my own situation as the Executive of the United States requires more time to consider in all its relations. 27
    Washington also wrote to his godson: “To begin to fulfill my role of father, I advise you to apply yourself seriously to your studies. Your youth should be usefully employed, in order that you may deserve in all respects to be considered as the worthy son of your illustrious father.” 28
    By the time Lafayette began his studies,