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SALUTES: April

Many sculptures in Manhattan are linked to important dates in U.S. or world history. Here are a few for April.

April 1, 2004: Celebrating Spring in the Conservatory Garden

* Untermeyer Fountain, by Walter Schott. Ca. 1910; placed in Garden 1947. Lifesize bronze figures on a limestone base. North end of the Conservatory Garden: enter at Fifth Ave. and 105th St., turn right and go to approximately 106th St.

* Burnett Memorial Fountain, by Bessie Potter Vonnoh, 1926-1936. Lifesize bronze figures on a granite pedestal. South end of the Conservatory Garden: enter at Fifth Ave. and 105th St., turn left and head south to approximately 103rd/104th St.

The Conservatory Garden is a formally laid out, fenced garden near the northeast corner of Central Park: a beautifully maintained and peaceful place, whose flowers should by this time be starting to bloom. Central Park's website (http://www.centralparknyc.org/virtualpark/northend/conservatorygarden) promises tulips and daffodils.

At opposite ends of the Garden are two charming sculptures. The Untermeyer Fountain (Fountain of the Three Dancing Maidens) is one of my favorite New York sculptures: it radiates delight, in a way few sculptures match, and there isn’t any point of view that doesn’t reveal some new, graceful aspect. The sculpture was once at the Yonkers estate of the wealthy and influential Untermeyer family.

The Burnett Fountain is also charming. Set at the end of a reflecting pool and recently cleaned, it honors Eliza Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924), author of the children’s classics Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) and The Secret Garden (1909). The boy playing the flute and the girl with the seashell who listens to him are Dickon and Mary from The Secret Garden. (Note: this sculpture faces north: visit it early rather than late in the day, so the sun will be on the children's faces.) If you like Vonnoh’s work, the Metropolitan Museum has several pieces by her – although they won’t necessarily all be on display.

The gates to the Conservatory Garden originally adorned the mansion of Cornelius Vanderbilt II at Fifth Avenue and 58th St. While you’re at the Conservatory Garden, give a passing greeting to Dr. J. Marion Sims, the founder of gynecology, who faces the Academy of Medicine at Fifth Ave. and 103rd St. A bit further north is the Museum of the City of New York, with statues of Alexander Hamilton and De Witt Clinton on the façade.

April 15, 1912: Three Manhattan Memorials to the Sinking of the Titanic

* Titanic Memorial Lighthouse, 1915. South Street Seaport, Fulton and Pearl Streets.

Despite the popularity of the 1997 movie Titanic, most New Yorkers aren’t familiar with the city’s three monuments to the “unsinkable” luxury liner that went down after colliding with an iceberg in the small hours of April 12, 1912. The 700 survivors (of 2,200 passengers and crew) were brought by the liner Carpathia to Manhattan’s Pier 54, and were treated in St. Vincent’s Hospital in the Village

Manhattan’s one non-figurative memorial to the Titanic is the 60-foot-high lighthouse at the Fulton and Pearl Street entrance to the South Street Seaport. From its dedication in 1915 until the building's demolition in 1967, the lighthouse at sat atop the Seaman's Church Institute at South Street and Coenties Slip. Triggered at noon by a telegraphic message from the National Observatory in Washington, a black ball dropped from the top of the lighthouse, giving a precise time to ships in the harbor and passersby during an era when clocks with quartz accuracy  were unknown. For a picture of the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse in its original location, see http://www.titanic-titanic.com/titanic%20memorial%20new%20york%20lighthouse.shtml. (If this doesn't work, go to www.titanic-titanic.com and search for "lighthouse.") For the Lighthouse in its present position, see www.pottsoft.com/home/titanic/memorials.html.  

 

* W.T. Stead Memorial. Bronze, 4 x 5 feet, by George James Frampton. 1913; this copy 1920. Central Park, at Fifth Ave. and 91st St. (set into the wall).

The second Titanic memorial is to William T. Stead, who introduced the sensationalist innovations of the American press - huge headlines, heavy illustrations, personal interviews - to British readers. (No need to thank us, chaps. For more on 19th-century American journalism, see December's Salute to Arthur Brisbane.) Stead recognized early on the immense power of the mass media:

The future of journalism depends almost entirely upon the journalist, and at present the outlook is not very hopeful. The very conception of journalism as an instrument of government is foreign to the mind of most journalists. Yet, if they could but think of it, the editorial pen is a sceptre of power, compared with which the sceptre of many a monarch is but a gilded lath. In a democratic age, in the midst of a population which is able to read, no position is comparable for permanent influence and far- reaching power to that of an editor who understands his vocation. In him are vested almost all the attributes of real sovereignty. He has almost exclusive rights of initiative; he retains a permanent right of direction; and, above all, he better than any man is able to generate that steam, known as public opinion, which is the greatest force of politics. ("Government by Journalism," The Contemporary Review v. 49; online at www.attackingthedevil.co.uk 

Stead was sailing to a speaking engagement in New York when the Titanic went down. Passengers in the lifeboats reported seeing him at the rail until the very last moment.

The memorial to Stead is a 1920 copy of a 1913 original on London's Embankment. Stead's profile is balanced by a Knight representing Fortitude and an angel representing Sympathy, probably a bow to Stead's habit of charging full speed ahead into disputes, and to his advocacy of social justice and women's rights. The memorial’s setting was designed by Carrere and Hastings, the architects responsible for the New York Public Library (1897-1911).

* Straus Memorial. Over life-size bronze sculpture with fountain and granite bench, by Augustus Lukeman. Dedicated 1915. West 106th St. between Broadway and West End Ave.

The third Titanic memorial - and by far the most beautiful - shows a woman in timeless classical robes gazing, chin on hand, into a pool. Clearly she’s remembering something she can no longer see. This is Memory, honoring Isidor and Ida Straus. The Strauses had been married for 41 years when they decided to return from a European trip on the Titanic. Isidor refused to enter a lifeboat while there were still women and children who had no seats; Ida refused to leave without him. The inscription on the granite seat behind Memory commemorates their devotion: “In memory of Isidor and Ida Straus, who were lost at sea in the Titanic disaster April 15, 1912. Lovely and pleasant were they in their lives and in their death they were not divided. II Samuel 1:23.”

Appropriate as it seems, the quote actually refers to father-and-son warriors Saul (first King of Israel) and son Jonathan.

Isidor Straus and his brother Nathan made Macy's the largest department store in the world. From selling crockery in Macy's basement at 14th St., they eventually came to own the company, and in 1902 moved the store from the languishing 14th-St. area to 34th and Broadway - at the time so far north of the city's commercial center that they had to offer free steam wagonette rides to customers. A few years later the Pennsylvania Railroad announced the opening of its terminal on the West Side at 32nd Street, and Macy's was suddenly within three blocks of thousands of commuters and tourists. (On the building of Penn Station, see the essay on Rea in Forgotten Delights: The Producers.)

For more on this sculpture, see Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan.

NOTE (4/5/08): Manhattan Borough Historian Michael Miscione points out that another of the city's memorials is related to the Titanic. On the Wireless Operators Monument in Battery Park, erected in 1915, the name of Jack Phillips of the Titanic is inscribed at the top of the list of names of wireless operators who lost their lives at sea while performing their duties. Read the historical marker for this monument on the Parks Department's site. The monument, which used to be near the East Coast Memorial, was removed temporarily for safekeeping while construction was under way on the subway lines beneath Battery Park. As of early 2008, it has not yet been returned.

April 17, 1524: Giovanni da Verrazzano is the first European to sail into New York Harbor

* Giovanni da Verrazzano, by Ettore Ximenes. Bronze bust, over life-size, with an allegorical figure below. 1909. Battery Park near the waterfront, just east of Castle Clinton.

Verrazzano, an Italian working for the French monarch and French merchants, dropped anchor on a beautiful spring day in 1524 at the approximate site of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. (Don’t ask me where the other “Z” went in the Bridge's name.) Here’s how he described what he saw:

We found a very pleasant place, situated amongst certain little steep hills; from amidst the which hills there ran down into the sea a great stream of water, which within the mouth was very deep, and from the sea to the mouth of same, with the tide, which we found to rise 8 foot, any great vessel laden may pass up. ... But because we rode at anchor in a place well fenced from the wind, we would not venture ourselves without knowledge of the place, and we passed up with our boat only into the said river, and saw the country very well peopled. The people are almost like unto the others, and clad with feathers of fowls of divers colors. They came towards us very cheerfully, making great shouts of admiration, showing us where we might come to land most safely with our boat. We entered up the said river into the land about half a league, where it made a most pleasant lake about three leagues in compass; on the which they rowed from the one side to the other, to the number of thirty of their small boats, wherein were many people, which passed from one shore to the other to come and see us. And behold, upon the sudden (as it is wont to fall out in sailing) a contrary flaw of the wind coming from the sea, we were enforced to return to our ship, leaving this land, to our great discontentment for the great commodity and pleasantness thereof, which we suppose is not without some riches, all the hills showing mineral matters in them.

By contrast, Maine was marked on the ship’s map as “Terra onde he mala gente” (Land of the Bad People).

For more on Verrazzano and why he’s accompanied by that very large, severe female, see the essay on this sculpture in Forgotten Delights: The Producers. For the Forgotten Delights New Year's card, whose illustration is Verrazzano, click here.

April 22 – May 25, 1915: Second Battle of Ypres

* Flanders Field Memorial, by Burt W. Johnson. Dedicated 1929. Bronze, just over life-size. De Witt Clinton Park, northwest corner of Eleventh Ave. and 52nd St.

With constant, in-your-face coverage of hundreds of American deaths, it’s easy to forget that the war in Iraq is one of the lowest-casualty wars in history. By contrast, the Second Battle of Ypres in World War I, which dragged on for four weeks, culminated in 69,000 dead among the Allies (Canadians, British, French) and  35,000 among the Germans. The battle is most famous as the site of the first use by the Germans of a new chemical weapon, chlorine gas. Wafted toward the Allies as  a low-lying, yellowish-green cloud, it caused asphyxiation – a relatively quick but horrible death.

Lt.-Col. Edward Morrison, a Canadian officer at Ypres (in the area of Belgium once known as Flanders), recalled, “My headquarters were in a trench on the top of the bank of the Ypres Canal, and John had his dressing station in a hole dug in the foot of the bank. During periods in the battle men who were shot actually rolled down the bank into his dressing station. Along from us a few hundred yards was the headquarters of a regiment, and many times during the sixteen days of battle, he and I watched them burying their dead whenever there was a lull. Thus the crosses, row on row, grew into a good-sized cemetery. Just as he describes, we often heard in the mornings the larks singing high in the air, between the crash of the shell and the reports of the guns in the battery just beside us.”

“John” in Morrison's account is John McCrae, surgeon with the 1st Brigade of Canadian Field Artillery. An experienced physician and an army man for 20-odd years, 43-year-old McCrae was appalled by Ypres, describing it in a letter home as “seventeen days of Hades.” When the battle had raged for more than two weeks, McCrae saw a young friend and former student killed in battle. In the absence of a chaplain he recited part of the funeral service by memory over the friend’s grave, in utter darkness to avoid German fire. Soon after, while awaiting the arrival of yet more casualties, McCrae spent 20 minutes composing a poem that became one of the most popular of World War I. In it, the thousands who died near Ypres warn their comrades to continue the fight, so they will not have died in vain:

 “In Flanders Field”

 In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

 We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
            In Flanders fields.

 Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
            In Flanders fields.

     In a letter to Morrison, McCrae recalled that he composed this poem partly as an exercise in meter. (It's an unusual form, 13 lines in iambic tetrameter and 2 lines of 2 iambics each.) If you’ve ever tried to wrestle an intense emotion into the confines of strict meter, you’ll appreciate how distracting, and how much of a relief, such an intellectual exercise can be. The poppy image is particularly apt. Poppies, which thrive in areas where the ground is churned up and no other vegetation survives – e.g., a battlefield – have for millennia been a symbol of sleep, because the seeds of some varieties produce opium and morphine. If their cause is betrayed, warn McCrae’s soldiers, they won’t rest despite all the soporific flowers growing on their graves.

In the statue Flanders Field Memorial, an anonymous doughboy looks pensively at a bunch of poppies in his hand. Appropriately, the statue is in the western fringes of what used to be known as “Hell’s Kitchen,” now politely known as Clinton. The renovation of the area initiated by the building of Worldwide Plaza on Eighth Avenue at 50th St. has not reached Eleventh Avenue yet: it’s still a place you wouldn’t venture unless you were looking to buy cars, or perhaps illegal substances.  Go with a friend. Go in a taxi. Go in the daytime.

The same artist did another World War I memorial known as the Woodside Doughboy, located between Woodside and Skillman Avenues at 56th Street). See a photo at http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/historical_signs/hs_historical_sign.php?id=10396

McCrae’s collected poems, published posthumously in 1919, are available online at http://toosvanholstein.nl/greatwar/books/inflandersfields/inflandersfields.pdf . On the Second Battle of Ypres, see http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/ypres2.htm .

April: Integrity Protecting the Works of Man

*  Integrity Protecting the Works of Man, by John Quincy Adams Ward, 1904. Pediment of the New York Stock Exchange, Broad Street between Wall St. and Exchange Place.

 Meyer Berger's 7/23/1954 New York Times column, "About New York," recounted a builder's story that the figures on the NYSE's pediment had been secretly replaced in 1936, and lampblack applied so the new figures would pass for the sooty originals. The Ward sculptures, Berger reported, had been smashed with sledgehammers on the pediment, behind screened scaffolding, and their fragments removed in covered slings. "To this day a bare handful of New Yorkers – Stock Exchange officials and employees, mostly, and the men who worked the switch – were the only ones who knew the switch had taken place."

 This would be shocking if true. What's more shocking is that Berger, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, didn't bother to check this anecdote against the Times's own files. The present New York Stock Exchange building, designed by George B. Post, opened for business on April 22, 1903. Its pedimental sculptures were unveiled in 1904, and by 1910 were showing signs of deterioration. By the 1930s the sheer weight of the sculptures (90 tons) was cracking the pediment, and pedestrians were at risk of having Integrity come crashing down on their heads. In 1936 the original sculptures were replaced with painted, lead-covered copper copies weighing a mere ten tons. The Times reported 6/26/1936 that "Hundreds of passers-by halted in Broad Street at the noon hour yesterday to witness the hoisting of the torso of "Integrity" into her central position." By December the Times reported that the work had been completed.

 Makes you wonder about the accuracy of Berger's other writings, doesn't it? Maybe even about other writings in the Times?

 John Quincy Adams Ward produced some excellent sculptures: Washington just north of the NYSE, Horace Greeley at City Hall, Roscoe Conkling in Madison Square Park, the Pilgrim in Central Park. Alas, although the NYSE pediment has a great concept – "Integrity Protecting the Works of Man" – its execution is uninspired. The 22-foot central figure, Integrity, isn't given attributes that make it clear what abstraction she represents. The fact that she wears the winged hat usually seen on Hermes (Mercury), god of commerce, is confusing. Another design flaw is that from the street, it's difficult to see what the figures on either side of Integrity are laboring over. Hence their meaning, too, is unclear.

 If anyone can send me photos of this pediment taken from the third or fourth floor of J.P. Morgan, across Broad Street, I wish you would. Meanwhile, here are my best guesses at the identity of the figures, based on street-level photos.

 The left side of the pediment represents science and technology.

  • Far left, two men studying large pieces of paper: builders or planners of some sort

  • Standing third from left: man wearing a leather (blacksmith's?) apron, tool in his left hand, his right hand resting on a complicated wheel

  • Man leaning pushing a lever, with a large gear and a riveted box behind him

  • Child sitting at Integrity's feet

 Center: Integrity, arms outstretched, wearing a winged hat, long classical dress, and cape that swirls behind her

 The right side represents products of the earth: agriculture, mining.

  • Child to the right of Integrity, looking helpfully up at the man to the right

  • Man bowed by the weight of a bag of grain; seems to be pouring the grain into a basket at the child's feet

  • Woman in a bonnet and pioneer dress, leading a sheep (visible just behind her, to the right)

  • Two men studying a piece of rock, the kneeling one holding a staff

 Notice that the poses of the figures on right and left echo each other, right down to the children at Integrity's feet.

What could be more appropriate to close an essay on the New York Stock Exchange than an excerpt from Francisco's money speech in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged?

 So you think that money is the root of all evil? … Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil? …

Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made - before it can be looted or mooched - made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability.

April 30, 1789: George Washington is sworn in as first president of the United States

* George Washington, by John Quincy Adams Ward. 1883. Wall and Nassau Sts., in front of the Federal Hall National Memorial.

 On Thursday, April 30, 1789, George Washington took the oath of office as first president of the United States. The president’s namesake Washington Irving, included a lengthy description in his 5-volume biography of Washington (1856-59). Although Irving was at the time a mere six years old, he was born and raised in a wealthy New York family, and if he did not remember the event himself, he doubtless heard his family speak of it. His account has an immediacy that I can’t equal. I’ll quote it in full, since it doesn’t yet seem to be available on the Net.

If you’ve ever stood at the corner of Wall and Broad, next to Ward’s statue representing Washington on the day of his inauguration, you should be able to picture the scene. If you haven’t stood there … what are you waiting for?

The inauguration took place on the 30th of April. At nine o’clock in the morning there were religious services in all the churches, and prayers put up for the blessing of Heaven on the new government. At twelve o’clock the city troops paraded before Washington’s door, and soon after the committees of Congress and heads of departments came in their carriages. At half-past twelve the procession moved forward, preceded by the troops. Next came the committees and heads of departments in their carriages, then Washington in a coach of state, his aide-de-camp, Colonel Humphreys, and his secretary, Mr. Lear, in his own carriage. The foreign ministers and a long train of citizens brought up the rear.

About two hundred yards before reaching the hall, Washington and his suite alighted from their carriages and passed through the troops, who were drawn up on each side, into the hall and senate chamber, where the Vice-President, the Senate and the House of Representatives were assembled. The Vice-President, John Adams, recently inaugurated, advanced and conducted Washington to a chair of state at the upper end of the room. A solemn silence prevailed, when the Vice-President rose and informed him that all things were prepared for him to take the oath of office required by the Constitution.

The oath was to be administered by the Chancellor of the State of New York in a balcony in front of the senate chamber and in full view of an immense multitude occupying the street, the windows and even roofs of the adjacent houses. The balcony formed a kind of open recess, with lofty columns supporting the roof. In the centre was a table with a covering of crimson velvet, upon which lay a superbly bound Bible on a crimson velvet cushion. This was all the paraphernalia for the august scene.

All eyes were fixed upon the balcony when, at the appointed hour, Washington made his appearance, accompanied by various public functionaries and members of the Senate and House of Representatives. He was clad in a full suit of dark brown cloth, of American manufacture, with a steel-hilted dress sword, white silk stockings and silver shoe buckles.  His hair was dressed and powdered in the fashion of the day and worn in a bag and solitaire.

His entrance on the balcony was hailed by universal shouts. He was evidently moved by this demonstration of public affection. Advancing to the front of the balcony, he laid his hand upon his heart, bowed several times and then retreated to an armchair near the table.

The populace appeared to understand that the scene had overcome him and were hushed at once into profound silence.

After a few moments Washington rose and again came forward. John Adams, the Vice-President, stood on his right; on his left the chancellor of the State, Robert R. Livingston; somewhat in the rear were Roger Sherman, Alexander Hamilton, Generals Knox and St. Clair, the Baron Steuben and others.

The chancellor advanced to administer the oath prescribed by the Constitution, and Mr. Otis, the secretary of the Senate, held up the Bible on its crimson cushion. The oath was read slowly and distinctly, Washington at the same time laying his hand on the open Bible. When it was concluded, he replied solemnly, “I swear – so help me God!” Mr. Otis would have raised the Bible to his lips but he bowed down reverently and kissed it.

The chancellor now stepped forward, waved his hand and exclaimed, “Long live George Washington, President of the United States!” At this moment a flag was displayed on the cupola of the hall, on which signal there was a general discharge of artillery on the Battery. All the bells of the city rang out a joyful peal and the multitude rent the air with acclamations.

Washington again bowed to the people and returned into the senate chamber, where he delivered to both houses of Congress his inaugural address, characterized by his usual modesty, moderation and good sense but uttered with a voice deep, slightly tremulous, and so low as to demand close attention in the listeners. After this he proceeded with the whole assemblage on foot to St. Paul’s church, where prayers suited to the occasion were read by Dr. Prevost, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in New York, who had been appointed by the Senate one of the chaplains of Congress. So closed the ceremonies of the inauguration.

The whole day was one of sincere rejoicing, and in the evening there were brilliant illuminations and fireworks.

 Immediately following this, Irving summarizes the difficulties that faced Washington as he began his first term. Irving’s account whirls us back to a time when the survival of the United States for 2 years, much less 220, was in doubt:

The eyes of the world were upon Washington at the commencement of his administration. He had won laurels in the field. Would they continue to flourish in the cabinet? His position was surrounded with difficulties. Inexperienced in the duties of civil administration, he was to inaugurate a new and untried system of government composed of States and people, as yet a mere experiment, to which some looked forward with buoyant confidence, many with doubt and apprehension.

He had moreover a high-spirited people to manage, in whom a jealous passion for freedom and independence had been strengthened by war and who might bear with impatience even the restraints of self-imposed government. The Constitution which he was to inaugurate had met with vehement opposition when under discussion in the general and State governments. Only three states, New Jersey, Delaware and Georgia, had accepted it unanimously. Several of the most important States had adopted it by a mere majority, five of them under an expressed expectation of specified amendments or modifications, while two States, Rhode Island and North Carolina, still stood aloof.

It is true the irritation produced by the conflict of opinions in the general and State conventions had in a great measure subsided, but circumstances might occur to inflame it anew. A diversity of opinions still existed concerning the new government. Some feared that it would have too little control over the individual States, that the political connection would prove too weak to preserve order and prevent civil strife; others, that it would be too strong for their separate independence and would tend toward consolidation and despotism.

The very extent of the country he was called upon to govern, ten times larger than that of any previous republic, must have pressed with weight upon Washington’s mind. It presented to the Atlantic a front of fifteen hundred miles divided into individual States differing in the forms of their local governments, differing from each other in interests, in territorial magnitudes, in amount of population, in manners, soils, climates and productions, and the characteristics of their several peoples.

Beyond the Alleghenies extended regions almost boundless, as yet for the most part wild and uncultivated, the asylum of roving Indians and restless, discontented white men …

 Washington Irving’s 5-volume biography of Washington first appeared 1856-59. Only vol. 1 seems to be online, at http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/7002 . The text above is from George Washington, A Biography, edited and abridged by Charles Neider (Doubleday, 1976). The full text of Washington’s first inaugural speech is at www.bartleby.com/124/pres13.html .

 A very, very large bust of Washington Irving sits outside Washington Irving High School, 40 Irving Place at East 17th St.

For more on Washington and this sculpture, see Essay 6 in Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan.

April 30, 1803: United States acquires the Louisiana Territory

*  Thomas Jefferson, by William Ordway Partridge. 1914. Columbia University, in front of the Graduate School of Journalism. (Enter on Broadway at 116th St., right at the end of the first building, then right again.)

 Everyone who’s had an American history course recalls (at least if reminded) that the purchase of the Louisiana Territory nearly doubled the size of the United States, adding some 800,000 square miles of land from the Mississippi to the Rockies and the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border for the bargain price of $15 million. For a map showing the purchase, see http://gatewayno.com/history/LaPurchase.html
 

Less well known is the fact that President Jefferson offered the governorship of the Territory to the Marquis de Lafayette, one of the last surviving generals from the Revolutionary War and a good friend from Jefferson’s time in Paris as minister to France. “I would prefer your presence to an army of 10,000 men to assure the tranquility of the country,” wrote Jefferson to Lafayette. “The old French inhabitants would immediately attach themselves to you and to the United States. You would annul the efforts of the foreign agitators who are arriving in droves.”

Lafayette had seen his hopes for American-style liberty in France crushed by the horrors of the French Revolution in the 1790s, and only in 1797 had been released from years in a foul Austrian prison. In 1803 he was living circumspectly in France under the rule of Napoleon, who had sold the Territory to the United States to gain money for his military incursions in Europe.

Lafayette replied to Jefferson:

You, my dear friend, have seen my hopes for French and American liberty; you shared those hopes. The cause of humanity has been victorious and been reaffirmed in America; nothing can stop it anymore, or displace it or tarnish its progress. Here, it is deemed irrevocably lost, but for me to pronounce this sentence and to do so through expatriation goes against my hopeful character. I cannot see how, unless some force place me in physical constraints, I could abandon even the smallest hope … I tell myself that I, the promoter of the revolution, I must not recognize the impossibility of seeing reestablished, during out lifetime, a just and generous liberty, American liberty.

The Jefferson and Lafayette quotes are taken from Harlow Giles Unger’s Lafayette, a thoroughly researched and very readable biography. Unger unapologetically regards Lafayette as a hero.

New York has 2 statues of Lafayette, both by Bertholdi, who designed the Statue of Liberty. One is at Union Square and East 16th St. The other, in which Lafayette is shown meeting George Washington, is near Morningside Park (114th St. and Manhattan Avenue, at Morningside Ave.). The Union Square Lafayette is discussed in Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan. To read about Lafayette and the abortive invasion of Canada in early 1778, and see an image of the Lafayette at Union Square, click here.

For more on this sculpture, see Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan.

 

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