Washington [508]
Once Washington received young Lafayette, he displayed boundless generosity toward him. Discarding earlier caution, he informed Madison that if circumstances permitted, he would take the boy “with his tutor into my family and, in the absence of his father, to superintend his education and morals.”51 The sight of the boy and the “visible distress” on his face deeply moved Washington.52 After hearing his heartrending pleas on his father’s behalf, Washington decided, strictly as a private person, to dispatch a handwritten letter to the Austrian emperor, requesting that Lafayette be released and allowed to come to America.
Washington delivered on his pledge to bring young Lafayette and his tutor into the household as long as Lafayette senior was imprisoned. Not surprisingly, Washington grew extremely fond of his young ward, whom he found “a modest, sensible, and deserving youth.”53 The boy was tall, kindly, and charming and delighted all who met him. Like his father before him, he made rapid strides in English, surpassing even his tutor. When architect Benjamin Latrobe stopped by Mount Vernon for dinner, he was very taken with young Lafayette’s savoir faire: “His manners are easy and he has very little of the usual French air about him . . . and seemed to possess wit and fluency.”54 Latrobe noticed that the president doted on the youth: “A few jokes passed between the President and young Lafayette, whom he treats more as his child than as a guest.”55 The situation was further testimony to Washington’s hidden emotional nature and his capacity to incorporate young people into his household as surrogate children. Young Lafayette and Félix Frestel remained with the Washingtons until October 1797, when word arrived that Lafayette had been freed after five years in prison. The two young men decided to sail back to Europe with all due speed. In a touching farewell, George Washington Lafayette wrote to his godfather how grateful he was for his efforts to rescue his real father and how happy he had been to form a temporary part of his family. Washington fully reciprocated the feeling. When young Lafayette was reunited with his father, he handed him a letter from Washington, who said that young Lafayette was “highly deserving of such parents as you and your amiable Lady.”56 The boy’s family were astonished at how much he had grown, not to mention his striking resemblance to his father. Instead of coming to America, however, the impoverished Lafayette and his nomadic family spent the next two years wandering across northern Europe, living in Hamburg, Holstein, and Holland.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
The Colossus of the People
AMID THE TRAVAIL OVER THE JAY TREATY, Washington was able to claim a spectacular diplomatic breakthrough with Spain. Settlers in the western hinterland had long chafed at Spanish restrictions on shipping their produce down the Mississippi River. Frustrated with governmental inaction, Kentucky residents threatened to secede from the Union, prompting President Washington to post Thomas Pinckney to the Spanish court as envoy extraordinary. In October 1795, in the Treaty of San Lorenzo, Pinckney won the right for Americans to use the Mississippi freely and trade in the port of New Orleans. The treaty also gave the United States iron-clad guarantees that the waterway defined the nation’s western border, a signature achievement for a president whose spacious vision of America had always stressed westward expansion. The Spanish treaty coasted to victory.
In contrast, Washington continued to face a hue and cry over the Jay Treaty, which had been ratified by King George III but still lacked funding for major provisions. Having stood by helplessly as it cleared the Senate, House Republicans jumped at the chance to wreck the treaty through their budgetary powers. The boldest challenge arose from Edward Livingston of New York, who introduced