On July 4th, historians discuss President James Monroe’s friendship with the Marquis de Lafayette
The National Park Service hosted a pair of patriotic lecturers Thursday at Fort Monroe in honor of Independence Day.
Their topic was "Freedom's Friendship" — in particular, the lifelong friendship between two icons of early American history: James Monroe and Gilbert du Motier , commonly known as the Marquis de Lafayette.
A large American flag towered above the proceedings and flapped at half-mast over the historic fort's battlements as historians Robert Kelly and G. Mark Walsh spoke in commemoration of American independence and the 193rd anniversary of the passing of the fort's namesake.
Monroe, the fifth president and former Virginia governor, died July 4, 1831. But the story of his friendship with Lafayette began during the Revolutionary War.
Monroe was born in Westmoreland County and later attended William & Mary. Just 18 when war broke out, he joined the Continental Army.
Lafayette, a French aristocrat, was 19 when he arrived in Philadelphia to join the American cause in 1777.
Both fought with distinction against the British Empire. They first met at the Battle of Brandywine. Monroe's knowledge of the French language helped to establish their bond.
"So imagine their closeness in age, their closeness in temperament, the language commonality and all these things are making these young men very close," Walsh told the small crowd.
Walsh, a member of the National Advisory Board for the James Monroe Memorial Foundation, added that the war heroes' bond was deepened through a shared acknowledgement of the hypocrisy of the Declaration of Independence words "all men all created equal" while institutionalized slavery continued to exist in America.
"Monroe increasingly had difficulty with those words," Walsh said. "... Lafayette takes those words and uses them in his first draft of the ('Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen')."
After the war, Lafayette returned to France and exchanged dozens of letters with Monroe and the other founding fathers, helped in the Louisiana purchase and recommended another Frenchman, General Simon Bernard, to oversee the design of American coastal fortifications. Bernard was placed in charge of the Board of Engineers and constructed forts, roads and canals.
"Fort Monroe, however, was Bernard's true masterpiece and it has often been called 'the Gibraltar of the Chesapeake," Kelly told the crowd.
Kelly, the vice-president of American Friends of Lafayette, added that this year is the bicentennial of Lafayette's final trip to America. In 1824, Lafayette was invited to the U.S. as a "Guest of the Nation" and visited all 24 states.
Lafayette was in Hampton Roads on Oct. 24, 1824. The American hero — who happened to be French — was escorted through Fort Monroe with the highest military honors.
