Amy Miller and Guy Trammell Jr.
| Color Us Connected
This column appears every other week in Foster’s Daily Democrat and the Tuskegee News. This week, Guy Trammell, an African American man from Tuskegee, Ala., and Amy Miller, a white woman from South Berwick, Maine, write a column about the Marquis de Lafayette, the military hero.
By Amy Miller
It was a breakfast date, a last-minute arrangement on June 23, 1825. The servers at the Dover event were from South Berwick and they knew General Lafayette would pass through their young town the next morning on his way up the coast.
And so it was that General Lafayette, the Revolutionary War hero from France, sat down for breakfast at the Frost Inn in downtown South Berwick, the current site of the Stage House Inn.
As the 200th anniversary celebration of Lafayette’s farewell tour weaves around the country this year, Lafayette is being remembered more as war hero than for some of his other remarkable qualities.
Fueled by a profound belief in the equality of humans, Lafayette left his home in France in 1777 to fight for the independence of this would-be nation. He was an aristocrat, yes, in fact one of the richest men in France. But unimpressed with status or riches, he donated not only his time but also his money to the cause of the Americans.
His cause – the country’s cause – was the fight against monarchy and the right of people to rule themselves. And he, unlike most of the founding fathers, strongly advocated against slavery, repeatedly pressuring his friend George Washington to outlaw the practice, clearly to no avail.
In late 1824, when Lafayette accepted President James Monroe’s invitation to return to the young nation, he included Maine on his 24-state tour over 13 months.
The townspeople in South Berwick quickly mobilized for his spontaneous visit with hundreds of regular citizens lining Main Street to welcome the noble Frenchman known in full as Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette.
Sarah Foster, who opened the inn in 1817 after her husband was lost at sea, had the parlor ready for the reception. There, Lafayette’s kind ways were on display.
“He was introduced to many, all of whom he took by the hand – and seemed not the least impatient in receiving the greetings of the lowest citizen, or the smallest child,” according to a newspaper clipping from the time.
The people rejoiced in showing the children of town “a Patriot whose character our parents have taught us to venerate,” said Select Board Chair Benjamin Greene, according to the 1825 article. He noted that Lafayette was identified with “freedom and independence with those civil and social rights by which the citizens of the United States are favored above any other people upon the Globe.”
Lafayette spiced up the morning when he commented that Sally Noble of South Berwick was the most beautiful young lady he had seen in America. Then he crossed the street to visit Olive Cushing, wife of a fellow Revolutionary solider, who served him currant wine and plum cake.
By 10 a.m. Lafayette was on his way up the coast. But word has it, Lafayette is likely to be back.
Lafayette’s Bicentennial Farewell Tour, organized by the American Friends of Lafayette, will end in June when, just as he did during his tour 200 years ago, he heads into Maine.
And for those who want to prepare, local historian Brad Fletcher will look at the excitement around Lafayette’s 1825 visit in a lecture sponsored by the Old Berwick Historical Society at 7 p.m. Feb. 26 at the First Parish Federated Church in South Berwick.
By Guy Trammell Jr.
How can we know a true believer in liberty? How would that person’s love of liberty appear?
Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier was born into the French aristocracy in 1757, a nobleman’s son and the future Marquis de Lafayette. After losing his parents as a youth, he inherited great wealth and was trained as a Musketeer.
Lafayette married Adrienne, joined the French Army, and crossed the ocean to fight without pay for the colonies’ liberty from the British Empire alongside General George Washington.
African American James Armistad served under Lafayette as a double spy, disclosing critical British supply line information that contributed to Cornwallis’ Yorktown surrender in 1781, ending the Revolutionary War.
Armistad, however, instead of being freed for his service as promised, was returned to the Virginia plantation. After years of writing Congress to plead his case, his situation was learned by Lafayette, who interceded, gaining Armistad’s freedom to raise a family and live in liberty.
General Lafayette was a charter member of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks. He and Adrienne purchased freedom for Africans in French colonies, including two French Guiana plantations in South America, emancipating the 48 African forced laborers into land owners.
He authored “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” that spoke of liberty for all, and encouraged Italian, Spanish, Greek and Polish freedom fighters. In his home, he sheltered many immigrants harassed by the French government.
An abolitionist, Lafayette suggested emancipation to George Washington, “a plan which might become greatly beneficial to the Black Part of Mankind…If it be a wild scheme, I had rather be mad that way.”
In 1824 and 1825, Lafayette toured America’s 24 states at the invitation of President James Monroe. He intentionally visited his African American friends in Virginia and Georgia, spent the night with Mvskoke Creek Indians at Tuskegee’s Warrior Stand, and deliberately shook each veteran’s hand while visiting the all Black New Orleans “Corps of the Men of Color.”
The hometown of the boxer Joe Louis, northeast of Tuskegee, was named in Lafayette’s honor.
It was said of Lafayette that he “still never fails to take advantage of an opportunity to defend the right which all men, without exception, have to liberty.”
General Lafayette looked forward to the day when “liberty will no longer have to blush in the presence of colored men.”
Guy and Amy can be reached at [email protected].
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Publish date : 2025-02-21 20:06:00
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