But, somehow, too little has changed in terms of the racial divide that-in a way that is all too apparent after the killing of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement-the founders and their successors not only failed to heal but often to address at all. No doubt, a great deal has changed for the better since the Civil War, including the abolishment of slavery 155 years ago and the constitutional and legislative establishment of equal rights for all Americans.
And as Americans celebrate another Independence Day, the sense of disillusionment has not disappeared, either. Lafayette was only one of many legendary figures associated with America’s founding 244 years ago this Saturday, July 4, who died dismayed over its inherent contradictions over race, which only grew more intractable with time. His sentiments came to be used as a rallying cry by abolitionists before the Civil War. “I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America, if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery,” Lafayette later said, according to historian Henry Wiencek’s 2003 book An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. 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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