Lafayette Square, Haverhill, Massachusetts
Posted on 11/17/2007 9:41:42 PM PST by The Pack Knight
It would be simple enough Pack Knight, Apple could brand their next Ipod the Von Steuben de Lafeyette..
Our history is an inspiration to all, when honestly told.
This month’s Smithsonian magazine has an excellent piece on the relationship between Washington and Lafayette. I didn’t realize how young Lafayette was, and on the surface it would seem hard to understand how two men so far apart in age could be so effective together.
Only 36% of history teachers were history majors. Only 60% of middle schools offer even one US history course.
How can we expect them to remember what they were never taught?
The relationship was both professional and personal. Lafayette became the son that Washington always wanted but never had.
With US-French relations heating back up...I’m betting on a Lafayette movie within eighteen months. Its interesting to review this whole episode...where the French intended for Lafayette to be a bit of spy and inform them of the events going on...and Washington pulled the curtain back and gave him full view...figuring that the French were only group around that might support the US.
Well, the city of Fayetteville, NC was named for him. Several other Fayettevilles around the country were too, I’m guessing.
So it’s not like the guy has been totally ignored. Being that he’s a dead white male, and French to boot, it’s a wonder he gets any attention at all.
The least we could do is remember them.
I suppose you could say that in some ways we emulate them.
If we stay focused and resist the fools then Afghanistan and Iraq will be free nations.
I spent the night on a French army base outside of Lyon, the next morning in their club they kept showing me pictures of their unit over here during the revolution but I was too hung over to make note of who they were.
I would sure love it if some French speaker could google that info. for me.
One time on a car tip I listened to some secondary coverage of a talk radio incident where some airheaded babe who happened to be a history teacher submitted herself to an on-air history quiz, and failed miserably, giving “Jay Walking” type answers to such questions as “who was the second president”, although I forget most of them.
The thing was that the people doing the show defended her for not knowing “what was the last battle of the Revolutionary War.” ... because they didn’t know, of course. They had a little discussion about it, to the effect, “who knows battles?”
Un vrai ami des Etats-Unis.
Among the many things that bear he name of the Marquis, there’s the park across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. A park that is a living monument to freedom of speech. Every form of protest known to man has occurred there, and the line between activist and vagrant can get blurry, because some of the protesters live there 24/7/365. Since Penn. Ave. was closed down, a lot fewer of them get hit by cars.
If you go to Lafayette, Georgia, be advised that the locals pronounce it “luh-FAY-et,” not “la-fa-YET.” We talk funny down here.
He had a few of those -- Alexander Hamilton prominent among them. In his command tent, in his Cabinet, even in his running of Mount Vernon, Washington surrounded himself with brilliant young men, surrogate sons, most of them with more formal education than Washington himself had. Those men were as absolutely loyal to him as he was to them.
I recommend "His Excellency" by Joseph Ellis, a good and thorough Washington bio. Eliis set out to cut through the layers of legend surrounding GW, and what he found was a human, conflicted, but unquestionably great man.
I constantly tell my son stories about the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Our family played their role in both wars. He's asked me about the "French and Indian" War recently and I need to look at the enlistment and deployment records up in our family book today. 168 members of our family are recorded in military service since 1635.
To put this number in perspective, there are ~2,400 of my family's traceable lineage existing today.
There's probably some enterprising PhD candidate out there writing a thesis claiming it was VERY personal. Sigh.
A personal tidbit. When we were selling some land in Upper Pointe Coupee Parish, we got a copy of the full land title, which, it turns out, traces back to a grant of land from the US government to the Marquis de Lafayette. It is of note that that small section of country has many old families that trace back to Revolutionary War Virginia (Claiborne being only one), while all the surrounding area is of French descent.
I wonder if the Marquis originally sold off that land grant to some of his "old army buddies".
I haven't been able to locate any other info about this land grant on the internet, though I did find reference to a second such grant in Florida.
I've been there -- it's now really more of a rotary than a "square", though -- a pass-through on the way to downtown from the highway.
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