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The Farewell Tour
Lafayette’s last visit to the United
States was a fourteen-month odyssey in 1824-25 that took him to every one
of the twenty-four states then in the union. Everywhere he went during
the “Farewell Tour,” as it became known, he was met with an outpouring
of affection from the American people on an unprecedented scale—thousands
turned out to see him at every stop and he was regaled with parades, ceremonies,
balls, dinners, and toasts in his honor. Lafayette’s status as the
“Guest of the Nation,” made it awkward for him to speak publicly against
slavery. Instead, he chose to make more symbolic gestures that conveyed
his interest in the welfare of African Americans. He insisted on
visiting the African Free School in New York City and publicly greeted
a delegation of black War of 1812 veterans in New Orleans, shaking hands
with each. In Virginia he stopped to visit in the homes of some slaves
and free blacks, and he renewed acquaintances with at least two slaves
in Richmond and Savannah that he had known during the American Revolution.
He also attended a meeting of the American Colonization Society (an organization
promoting the return of freed slaves to Africa) in Washington D.C., where
he was made a perpetual vice president. In private, however, Lafayette
had frank discussions about slavery with his old friends Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison as well as other Virginia planters.
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Skillman & Kirby Libraries · Lafayette College
· Easton, PA 18042
Last updated 9 August 2002