Washington was just as enamored of the Frenchman who helped him win the war: If you visit the first president’s estate at Mount Vernon today, you will see, displayed prominently in the front parlor, the rusted key to the Bastille in Paris that Lafayette sent Washington during the French Revolution, describing it in a letter as a tribute from a “missionary of liberty to its patriarch.”Īnd yet when the war was done, Lafayette expressed disillusionment with the patriarch of liberty, who politely rebuffed or ignored the Frenchman’s repeated pleas to free America’s slaves-some of whom had fought valiantly as soldiers in the assault at Yorktown. He revered the man he called his “beloved, matchless Washington” as a surrogate father. The young and idealistic French aristocrat endured the terrible winter at Valley Forge and fought bravely in critical battles in the Revolutionary War-playing a decisive role in George Washington’s victory at Yorktown. There was no greater devotee to the American cause of independence than the Marquis de Lafayette.
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