Sold – Lafayette Recalls the “Trying Travails” of the Revolution

Lafayette made a triumphal return to the United States in 1824, and on a nationwide tour was received as a hero. At every stop dignitaries and the aged fellow-veterans of the Revolution, then half a century in the past, greeted him.

In some cases he was able to shake the hands of men he had served with and known well so many years earlier. One such occasion took place on September 1 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where 30 Revolutionary War veterans who had served under him were among those in attendance, including General John Kilby Smith of Portland, Maine, who had served as one of his officers for three years.

Autograph Letter Signed, Paris, March 7, 1830, to General Smith, who he addresses as “My dear friend and companion in arms.” “Here is an answer to your good son-in-law which I leave opened for your perusal, and so I have little to add on political matters. But as I feel much great deal I would like to say of my old constant, tender friendship for you, it is true those sentiments are by you as perfectly well known as they are reciprocated. I shall therefore today content myself with affectionate respects to Mrs. Smith. Remember me also to all about you and think some time of Your old brother in trying travailsÉ”

A warm letter of the elder patriot showing that he maintained his affection for his old American comrades to the end of his life. Smith had enlisted in 1775 just weeks after the war opened, and served as a captain in the Massachusetts Line of the Continental Army, remaining right until the war officially ended in November 1783. After the war he settled in Maine, where for many years he was Inspector General. Perhaps that accounts for the title “general” by which Lafayette addresses him and the history of Portland, Maine records him.