On the morning of April 29, 1825, William Clark, Edward Coles, and Thomas Hart Benton came aboard the steamboat Natchez at the small village of Carondelet, Missouri to accompany the Marquis de Lafayette, known to Americans as General Lafayette, to St Louis.
William Clark was the Clark of the Lewis & Clark Expedition of 1804 to 1806, which had explored the newly acquired Louisiana Territory, crossed the Rockies, reaching the Pacific Ocean in what later became Oregon. Upon his return, President Jefferson appointed Clark as the first Superintendent of Indian Affairs, a role which he held until his death in 1838. The explorer also served as Territorial Governor of Missouri from 1813 until it was admitted as a state in 1820.
Elected as U.S. Senator from the new state of Missouri in 1821, a seat he held until 1851, Benton served as an aide to General Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812. Benton and Jackson had wild temperaments, getting into a fight at a hotel in Nashville in 1813 which ended when Benton's brother shot Jackson in the arm, after Thomas Hart unsuccessfully tried to shoot the general. Reconciling a decade later, Benton became a fervent political supporter of Jackson.
Though a slaveowner, Benton opposed the Compromise of 1850, believing it too favorable to the slave states, and provoking a notorious incident on the floor of the Senate which I've previously written about (see Senator Foote Draws His Pistol). As a result, the state legislature refused to reappoint him to the senate.
Edward Coles was Governor of Illinois. Born to a slave-holding family in Virginia, Coles became opposed to slavery at a young age. Upon inheriting twelve slaves from his father's estate, Coles planned to emancipate them but found that changes to Virginia law made that difficult. Instead he took the slaves to Kentucky. Being from a well-connected Virginia family, President Madison asked him to serve as his private secretary, a role he performed from 1810 to 1815. During that time he also made a visit to the New England states and played a role in reopening communications between former presidents Adams and Jefferson, leading to their remarkable correspondence which continued until both died on July 4, 1826. Coles also corresponded with Jefferson, urging him to publicly oppose slavery.(1)
In 1818, Coles purchased land in the Illinois Territory, and led the successful opposition to a proposal to allow slavery in the new state constitution. The following year, Coles transported his slaves to Illinois, gave them their freedom, purchasing 160 acres of land for each freed family. Elected governor in 1822, Coles once again led the successful opposition to a proposal to amend the state constitution to allow slavery. Defeated for reelection in 1826, Coles left the state, moving to Philadelphia. He still advocated for the end of slavery, urging the Virginia legislature to end slavery after Nat Turner's rebellion, and while on a visit to James and Dolly Madison, responding to the former president who asked for advice on the best way to free his slaves.
Coles lived to see the end of slavery, dying in 1868, but suffering the divisions of the Civil War. One of his sons served in the Union Army but another, who had returned to live in Virginia and became a slaveowner, fought and died for the Confederacy.
For Lafayette, a fierce opponent of slavery, meeting Coles must have been refreshing, as the only discordant note in his tour was to observe that slavery still existed in parts of the country he loved.
The Natchez weighed anchor and started moving downriver the six or seven miles to St Louis. Auguste Levasseur, Lafayette's secretary and author of Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825: Or, Journal of a Voyage to the United States (1829) reports:
But if we were struck with the diversity of languages in which General Lafayette was saluted, we were not less so by the unity of sentiment which they manifested. The shore was covered by the whole population, who mingled their cries of joy with the roar of the cannon of our two vessels. The moment the general stepped on shore, the mayor, Dr Lane, presented himself at the head of the municipal authorities, and greeted him with an address. As the general concluded his reply to the mayor, an elegant calash drawn by four horses approached the shore, to conduct him to the city, through all the streets of which he was drawn in the midst of acclamations of the people.
Taken to a house to prepare for his reception which was open to all citizens "without distinction", the general received visitors including William Hamilton, son of Alexander, Lafayette's dear friend from the days of the War for Independence. Lafayette, Hamilton, and John Laurens were all aides to George Washington.
The general was taken by his hosts on a carriage ride to visit the ancient Indian mounds along the Mississippi River. Lavasseur remarks that such mounds, also found Indiana and Ohio, indicated "that this world which we call new, was the seat of civilization, perhaps long anterior to the continent of Europe".
Returning to town they visited an enormous collection of "Indian curiosities" at William Clark's home, including specimens of clothing, arms, and utensils for fishing, hunting and war by the tribes of the Missouri and Mississippi valleys. Presenting some of the materials obtained during their great Western expedition, the author writes that Lewis & Clark "concluded that there formerly existed, near the pole, a communication between Asia and America".
Moving on to a banquet in honor of the general, Levasseur reports:
In this company, that which touched General Lafayette most was the prevailing unanimity among the guest, who, though they did not all speak one language, agreed, perfectly in respect to the excellence of those republican institutions under which it was their happiness to live.
Next it was on to a ball featuring "the most numerous and brilliant company assembled, as we were informed, that had ever been seen upon the western shore of the Mississippi". As midnight drew near, Lafayette, his son George, and Lavasseur returned to the Natchez for a few hours rest, before they embarked at dawn on the next leg of their journey.
All in all, it was just another day on Lafayette's extraordinary 13 month tour of America, of which you can also read about in Lafayette's Tour, Meaning Well, and Calculated For The Good Of The Citizens.
I've now finished reading Lavasseur's account of that journey, which provides much insight into how Americans thought of themselves and their country, fifty years into the Great Experiment. The book was also written with the French political situation in mind. The 1820s were the time of the Bourbon Restoration, and Charles X, who ascended to the throne in 1824, was determined to revert France back to an absolute monarchy, anathema to Lafayette who supported a constitutional monarchy on the model of Great Britain. The Bourbons would have liked to arrest Lafayette because of his opposition but he proved to popular a figure to take direct action against. Lavasseur's book can be read as contrasting the American republican system, popular with all classes of citizens, with the repression in the existing French system. It is likely that Lavasseur, at some points, exaggerates the success and popularity of the American system to heighten the contrast with France.
The most striking contrast occurs after Lafayette's return to France. In America, his visits to every city and town were marked by joyous and peaceful celebrations. On arriving in Rouen, while he was hosted at a dinner by a local merchant a crowd gathered outside to salute him. The local army detachment and gendarmes, worried about the crowd and the political opposition, arrived on the scene, opened fire, severely wounding several in the peaceful crowd and arresting others. Lavasseur writes of the incident:
This atrocious conduct of the magistrates and their servile instruments afflicted us the more, from having a few days previous enjoyed the free expression of the feeling and enthusiasm of the American people, and which in spite of ourselves forced a comparison that was far from being favorable to our own country.
In 1830, Charles X attempted to complete the steps towards an absolute monarchy, provoking a revolt in Paris, in which Lafayette took over command of the National Guard, helping oust the monarch, and supporting Louis Philippe in the establishment of a constitutional monarchy.
The Marquis died on May 20, 1834 and was buried in a Paris cemetery. His son sprinkled soil from Bunker Hill over the grave site. President Andrew Jackson ordered that Lafayette be given the same funeral honors as George Washington. Flags were flown at half-mast for 35 days, the chambers of Congress were draped in black and the country was asked to dress in black for 30 days. Former president John Quincy Adams delivered a three hour eulogy in Congress.
More to come on Lafayette's Tour . . .
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(1) Excerpts from Coles letter to Jefferson of July 31, 1814:
I will not enter on the right which man has to enslave his Brother man, nor upon the moral and political effects of Slavery on individuals or on Society; because these things are better understood by you than by me. My object is to entreat and beseech you to exert your knowledge and influence, in devising, and getting into operation, some plan for the gradual emancipation of Slavery.
In the calm of this retirement you might, most beneficially to society, and with much addition to your own fame, avail yourself of that love and confidence to put into complete practice those hallowed principles contained in that renowned Declaration, of which you were the immortal author, and on which we bottomed our right to resist oppression, and establish our freedom and independence.
Permit me then, my dear Sir, again to intreat you to exert your great powers of mind and influence, and to employ some of your present leisure, in devising a mode to liberate one half of our Fellowbeings from an ignominious bondage to the other; either by making an immediate attempt to put in train a plan to commence this goodly work, or to leave human Nature the invaluable Testament—which you are so capable of doing—how best to establish its rights: So that the weight of your opinion may be on the side of emancipation when that question shall be agitated, and that it will be sooner or later is most certain—That it may be soon is my most ardent prayer—that it will be rests with you.
Excerpts from Jefferson's response to Coles, August 25, 1814. Coles must have been encouraged by the opening sentences:
Your favour of July 31, was duly received, and was read with peculiar pleasure. The sentiments breathed through the whole do honor to both the head and heart of the writer. Mine on the subject of slavery of negroes have long since been in possession of the public, and time has only served to give them stronger root. The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain, and should have produced not a single effort, nay I fear not much serious willingness to relieve them & ourselves from our present condition of moral & political reprobation.
Only to have his hopes dashed. After a recitation of his youthful efforts to oppose slavery, Jefferson opines as to his confidence in its ultimate abolition, but declines to play any further public role:
Yet the hour of emancipation is advancing, in the march of time. It will come; and whether brought on by the generous energy of our own minds; or by the bloody process of St Domingo, excited and conducted by the power of our present enemy, if once stationed permanently within our Country, and offering asylum & arms to the oppressed, is a leaf of our history not yet turned over. As to the method by which this difficult work is to be effected, if permitted to be done by ourselves, I have seen no proposition so expedient on the whole, as that as emancipation of those born after a given day, and of their education and expatriation after a given age.
I am sensible of the partialities with which you have looked towards me as the person who should undertake this salutary but arduous work. But this, my dear sir, is like bidding old Priam to buckle the armour of Hector "trementibus aequo humeris et inutile ferruncingi." No, I have overlived the generation with which mutual labors & perils begat mutual confidence and influence. This enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to its consummation. It shall have all my prayers, & these are the only weapons of an old man.
He then discourages Cole from going through with his plans to free his slaves:
My opinion has ever been that, until more can be done for them, we should endeavor, with those whom fortune has thrown on our hands, to feed and clothe them well, protect them from all ill usage, require such reasonable labor only as is performed voluntarily by freemen, & be led by no repugnancies to abdicate them, and our duties to them.
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