Sold – During His Triumphal Tour of America Lafayette Expresses Gratitude For a Boy Named After Him

In 1824, with the nation prosperous, exuberant and in the midst of the Era of Good Feeling, nostalgia was strong for the Revolutionary War generation that had made the U.S. independent and was now passing rapidly from the scene. President James Monroe invited the Marquis de Lafayette to visit the United States, and accompanied by his son, George Washington Lafayette, the old soldier  visited all 24 states of the Union.  Everywhere he was received with great enthusiasm and excitement. On August 16, he disembarked in New York and was escorted from the Battery in a carriage drawn by four white horses to City Hall. Then, while in his carriage and placed on a barge with his horses, Lafayette was taken to Brooklyn and cheered by thousands. In the crowd was a 15-year-old boy named Walt Whitman who never forgot that exciting moment. When he arrived in Philadelphia on September 29, Lafayette was greeted by a long parade that included 160 Revolutionary War veterans drawn in large wagons. A few days later, the Marquis visited Brandywine battlefield where he had been shot in the leg. In October, he visited the tomb of Washington at Mount Vernon, then left for Yorktown, where he was greeted by Chief Justice John Marshall. After that, he stayed with Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. At a banquet at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, the Marquis was seated between Jefferson and James Madison. On November 23, Lafayette dined in the White House with President and Mrs. Monroe. He would remain based in Washington until March 1825.

Fayette Johnston, who was born January 14, 1796, was named by his soldier/father in honor of General Lafayette. He went on to become a physician. He and his wife Mrs. Eliza Johnston attended the reception for Lafayette at the Town Hall upon the hero’s visit to Fredericksburg in November 1824. In December, the Johnstons had a little son, and they named the boy in the general’s honor LaFayette Washington Johnston. The family history states that the couple received from Lafayette “a note of acknowledgement.” This is that letter.

Autograph Letter Signed in English, Washington, January 6, 1825, to Fayette Johnston in Fredericksburg. “I am much obliged to the remembrance of my brother soldier when he gave you my name and am now to thank you for an act of kindness of the same nature conferred upon me by his son. I beg your consort and yourself to accept my acknowledgment to you, my blessing upon the boy, and my good wishes to the family.” The original envelope is still present.

We wish that the boy’s story had a happy ending, but alas it did not.  LaFayette Washington Johnston died in May 1825, age four months.