Megan Huang

2024 marks the bicentennial of the return of Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, to the United States, almost fifty years after he first sailed for North America to aid the American Revolution. Lafayette had dreamed of coming back to the United States for years, but having been deeply enmeshed in the considerable turmoil and change of his home country of France, he had been forced to wait until he was in his sixties to finally make the trip.

Arriving in New York City from Le Havre, Lafayette embarked on a thirteen-month odyssey of all twenty-four states in the Union. Great fanfare accompanied him wherever he went in the form of processions, visits to the battlefields upon which he fought, dinners with old and new national leaders, and reunions with fellow Revolutionary War veterans. He had his portrait painted, addressed Congress, and basked in the glow of his glory days as a wide-eyed nineteen-year-old. It was during this tour that on October 12, 1824, Lafayette first visited Washington, DC. He was paraded through the city with a military escort and welcomed at the White House by President James Monroe, who had also served with him during the war. Of perhaps particular note to us Hoyas, Lafayette made time to visit Georgetown (“very prettily situated on the declivity of a hill between the Potomac and Rock Creek”) and “Georgetown college,” where he “was received with great evidences of gratitude and patriotism.” The tour was nothing short of a massive bonanza in Lafayette’s honor — and the country’s too. As one of Lafayette’s biographers, Laura Auricchio, pointed out, “In celebrating Lafayette, Americans were celebrating their own past and honoring all of the country’s early leaders.” 

Today, Lafayette’s tour is the subject of its own commemoration put on by the American Friends of Lafayette to retrace his exact journey through the country. And this celebration-of-a-celebration, inception-like occasion for Lafayette brings to mind another milestone that is fast approaching, the semiquincentennial (250th anniversary) of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 2026. This mouthful of a jubilee, named America 250, has already been in the planning stages for years, with the entire country preparing to roll out a patriotic production of tributes and observances. Some of these include a nationwide bell ringing and the burial of a time capsule. 

Such events serve as a reminder of how the past is recalled — on the biggest stages like the 250th will be, or in the Google Doc of one graduate student. Acknowledging the past and knowing how to talk about it has always been a tricky minefield to navigate, just as much for historians writing for an academic journal and museum curators whose exhibits reach millions of people. And it is all too easy, as well, for bad faith actors to take history and twist it into a revisionist pseudohistory that has dangerous, long-term effects once it seeps into even just a part of society. 

Lafayette’s tour was no exception to the question that surrounds historical memory. For example, as the Americans’ guest of honor, Lafayette felt awkward about publicly denouncing the United States’ continued practice of slavery, even though he was an abolitionist. Instead, he acknowledged Africans’ and African Americans’ important contributions to the country by visiting places like the African Free School in New York and meeting with African American veterans such as James Armistead Lafayette, a formerly enslaved man who took Lafayette’s name in honor of the man he had fought with during the Revolution. But in 2024, there are rightfully higher standards for how to remember history and the people who played a part in it, simultaneously in an atmosphere that is quick to raise eyebrows. One only needs to look at the controversy over the Smithsonian’s planned exhibit for the fiftieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — an exhibit so rife with criticism that it was eventually scrapped — to understand the business of memorialization is fraught with pitfalls. 

It is not as if historians should cater to the public perception of history over the truth or shy away from any particular subject. However, it is always worth reflecting on what our own personal biases and interests prioritize or sideline people, places, and stories. Moreover, we should be aware of how these biases and interests are conveyed, whether in the form of a book, a museum display, or a parade. 

No doubt the celebrations for the semiquincentennial are being carefully planned. As these milestones pass, we should take the time to appreciate them and all that happened, but not with blinders so we only see the most popular interpretation of the past, or the interpretation we want to see. There are less than two years to see how America 250 lives up to that challenge. To meet it head on will be no easy feat, but doing so anyway would certainly be in the spirit of Lafayette. 

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Megan Huang is a second year MA student in the Global, International, and Comparative History program. Her research is centered around the American Revolution, utilizing the history of emotions to examine how women used sentimental language for political expression. She graduated from the University of St Andrews with a degree in Modern History and enjoys reading, writing, and cross-stitching in her spare time.