Lafayette Returns to the United States

On 21 March 1825, the marquis de Lafayette laid the cornerstone of the General Nathanael Greene memorial in Savannah, during his triumphal tour of the United States

On 21 March 1825, the marquis de Lafayette laid the cornerstone of the General Nathanael Greene memorial in Savannah (Georgia), during his triumphal tour of the twenty-four states of the Union. The last surviving French general to have served in the War of Independence, Lafayette had fought valiantly alongside George Washington.

  • Date: 21 March 1825
  • Location: Savannah, Georgia (United States)
  • Context: Lafayette’s farewell tour of the United States (1824–1825)
  • Duration of stay: July 1824 – September 1825

President James Monroe invited Lafayette to visit America in 1824 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of independence and inspire patriotic sentiment in a new generation. Lafayette arrived at Staten Island on 13 July 1824 and visited all twenty-four states of the Union over the following year. He travelled to New York, Rochester, Boston, Providence, Raleigh, Savannah, New Orleans, Nashville, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and many points in between.

Lafayette dined with President James Monroe and President John Quincy Adams, met Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, visited the Washington family at Mount Vernon, went to Yorktown for the 43rd anniversary of that battle, to Brandywine for the 47th anniversary of that engagement, and addressed Congress twice during his stay.

The Savannah Ceremony

Lafayette’s travels in the South began in March 1825. He arrived in Savannah on 19 March and, on the 21st, laid the cornerstone of a memorial to General Nathanael Greene on Johnson Square. During the War of Independence, Greene was George Washington’s second-in-command. He was famous for his prowess on the northern battlefields, but above all for turning the American situation around in the South and driving the British to defeat.

After the war, the State of Georgia gave General Greene a rice plantation called Mulberry Grove, near Savannah, where he lived until his death in 1786. His wife, Catherine Littlefield Greene, continued to reside there. George Washington visited and dined at Mulberry Grove in 1791 during his grand tour of the United States. Around the same time, Mrs Greene made the acquaintance of a young man named Eli Whitney, a tutor at a neighbouring estate. She invited him to live on her plantation to pursue his inventions. It was there that he developed the cotton gin in less than a year, an invention that would revolutionise the South.

The Departure

Lafayette concluded his journey in Washington on 6 September 1825, his 68th birthday, with a meeting with President Adams at the White House and an address before a joint session of Congress. He left the United States the following day aboard the frigate USS Brandywine, newly built and named in honour of the battle where he had shed his blood for the liberty of America.

Henry Williams (SAR)

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