Rally ’Round the Cannon: All Attend the Père Fondateur!

Will you give all you can give so that our banner may advance?
Some will fall and some will live, will you stand up and take your chance?
The blood of the martyrs will water the meadows of France!

— Feuilly, Les Miserables, 1985

If Orange and Black Day (celebrating the College charter), Alumni Day (celebrating Washington’s birthday, among other things …), Commencement (celebrating the expulsion of the seniors so as to try again with next year’s freshmen), and/or Reunions (celebrating the failure of said expulsion and the toasting of, well, just about anything else) weren’t a serious indicator, let’s just state for the record that Princetonians have always been up for a party at the drop of a hat or pith helmet or whatever. This really shouldn’t alarm the more studious neuroscientists, classicists and Keynesians trying to get their work done and their thoughts thought at various isolated outposts throughout the campus, if only because one of the great ironies of the multifarious system of higher education that has evolved in the United States is that the party animals’ somewhat frivolous esprit is a vital cog in the financial support system that makes all the grand studiosity perk along. Thus, practical objections being minimal, various celebrations ranging from chess victories to Glee Club anniversaries to Nobel prizes continue unabated, and we here at Your Favorite Periodical and our buddies in the orange tchotchke trade retain their raison dêtre.

And so when I speak of what may be the most bizarre formal celebration in Princeton’s history, it seems there must be dozens of candidates for the title, making it illusory to actually settle upon any particular choice. You, the Esteemed Historian, you be the judge. For today we recount the giddy episode just 200 years ago on the front campus of the Big Brunch Bash for the Marquis de Lafayette.

Don’t get me wrong, the Marquis seems to have been a really fine guy. Given the highly mixed blessing of being born really rich in a dysfunctional, huge monarchy, he was also born in an age of ideas and insights into the human condition, the same Enlightenment that gave rise to Princeton. He was born in 1757, a year after Nassau Hall opened for business. Nineteen years later, full of ideals and energy, he volunteered to lead a boatful of French aid to the British Colonies in their rebellion; when the funding fell apart, he simply bought the ship himself and sailed over to locate Gen. George Washington and his ragamuffin rebels. He caught up with them the next spring following the pivotal Battle of Princeton, then hung on with the general through thick and thick, including winter at Valley Forge, finally earning his stripes and leading troops at the Battle of Brandywine, where he was shot in the leg. Along the way he ran into the Rev. John Witherspoon, probably when the army was advancing and the Congress retreating, both commonplace; a mutual admiration developed. When the occasion arose in 1779 to send somebody to France to urge the supply of more ships and armaments to put the American Revolution on firmer ground, Lafayette was the obvious choice. Greeted as a returning hero, he hunted with the king and hung out with Ben Franklin in Paris, before leading an aborted French/Spanish invasion of Great Britain, then voluntarily returning in advance of a French fleet to America. He ended up as one of Washington’s lead generals, winning the ultimate battle for Yorktown with brilliant deception that allowed the British to trap themselves. After great celebration and expressions of thanks from across the colonies, he returned to France in 1781 to great admiration and fame there as well, helping to negotiate the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution. He was still only 26 years old. He dined in Paris each Monday night with Franklin, John Jay, and John Adams.

Given all this, you would strongly suspect Lafayette was a big fan of democracy, if not of 13 new little states popping up on the map to join the infinite kingdoms, duchies, principalities, and whatever of Germany, Italy, Poland, and other balkanized (don’t forget the Balkans!) regions of Europe. And you would be right, although there was a major twist to his democratic beliefs in the practical political world. He felt a constitutional monarchy was the way to go. Whether out of philosophical sophistication (e.g. separating the head of state from the head of government) or tradition (France had then had a king for 900 years or so) is not clear; it certainly had nothing to do with religion, since he was a Deist similar to Jefferson. In any case, when the French Revolution broke out in 1789, it made him the perfect candidate to lead National Guard troops trying desperately to prevent a bloodbath and anarchy following the arrest of Louis XVI and company. Taking charge the day after the Bastille was stormed, he kept the various sides apart, more or less successfully, for three long years, until the radicals succeeded in abolishing the monarchy and putting out warrants for Lafayette as well. He tried to flee to America, but was recognized in the Austrian Netherlands and imprisoned by Prussia for five years.

Back in America, Witherspoon noted Lafayette’s efforts in the evolving French Revolution and urged the trustees to do something; in 1790 they voted him an honorary degree in absentia. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t keep him out of prison. When he finally got out in 1797, he returned to France, went easy on the politics, and somehow managed to thrive under both the Napoleonic Empire and the various Bourbon Restorations along the way; he was now known as the Hero of Two Worlds.

And so we fast forward to 1824, when Lafayette is 67 years old and, in a variety of ways, the final relic of a romanticized era (or eras, really). Internationalist President James Monroe (you know, the Monroe Doctrine guy) has a happy thought to merge these interests with the upcoming Golden Anniversary of the United States: a tour of the country by the Old General. To say this struck a chord is vast understatement; he became a one-man GDP enhancement, every little burg in the U.S. seemed to vie for a place on his schedule, and the important cities commissioned buildings and civic improvements for the occasion. Originally slated for the original 13 states, the triumphal tour expanded to all 24, and ended up 16 months long.

And right at the outset, prior to Philadelphia, prior to Washington D.C., prior to Charlottesville to meet Jefferson and James Madison 1771, Lafayette and his considerable entourage descended upon … the stage stop of Princeton, where he had never before set foot.

Now, the College was hardly in great shape. Ashbel Green 1783, fired as president and packed off to his beloved Seminary two years earlier, had left a morass of seething factions, with trustees pitted against faculty and students. The size of the student body was eroding, down to 180 when the Marquis dropped by, less than half its prior peak. James Carnahan 1800, the really nice outside guy chosen to succeed Green, was busy building a record of very little impact over 32 years. The admired Vice President Philip Lindsley 1804 was leaving for Nashville, of all places, after deciding the trustees didn’t support him. John Maclean 1816, the only other inspirational person on the faculty, was all of 24 years old and the son of a man Green had fired. What exactly did Princeton have to attract an eminence grise in demand like Lafayette?

Well, it seems nobody ever bothered to post Lafayette’s honorary degree (remember?), awarded in 1790 at the height of the French Revolution. It had been drawn up, however, and bore the signature of the Marquis’ friend John Witherspoon, now 30 years in the cemetery presidents’ plot down the street. And so, on Saturday morning Sept. 25, 1824, seemingly all of Somerset County showed up on the front campus to welcome the Old General. A languid trip from New Brunswick for his unruly entourage delayed the ceremony at the temporary “Temple of Science” on the front campus, complete with Greek pillars and a circular canopy; with Peale’s portrait of Washington (Lafayette’s father figure) overseeing the formalities inside. Senator Richard Stockton 1779, son of the signer of the Declaration of Independence, gave a florid welcoming address, and President Carnahan presented Lafayette with his diploma. He graciously thanked the multitude with poignant remembrances:

While the name of this city recalls important military remembrance, it is also connected with that of the illustrious college which in diffusing knowledge and liberal sentiments, has greatly contributed to turn those successes to the advantage of public liberty. Your library had been destroyed, but your principles were printed in the hearts of American patriots.

Then the invited guests adjourned to the college refectory (chosen not for cuisine, but as the largest room in town) for a breakfast that had become a late brunch, followed by the visiting dignitaries vanishing into the afternoon sun toward Philadelphia.

Lafayette would continue the farewell tour for another full year, covering 6,000 miles and hundreds of American burgs and ceremonies large and small. Then, more astonishingly, in 1830 at 73 he would serve again as commander of the National Guard to defuse revolution in Paris, 40 years after his initial peacekeeping efforts. The French Assembly fired him prior to the bloody barricades of 1832 depicted in Hugo’s Les Miserables.

But an activist spark was seemingly left behind in otherwise beset Princeton. By 1826, two years after Lafayette’s visit to both, young professor Maclean Jr. talked Madison into becoming the head of a new association of alumni, which immediately began fundraising; in 1829 Maclean was made vice president and proceeded to act on the college’s behalf (with little objection from Carnahan or the trustees) for a full 25 years, bringing Princeton back from the abyss. Was the harkening back to the era of Witherspoon, Washington, and Lafayette a force in this resuscitation? Well, when Madison died in 1836, two years after Lafayette, he left $1,000 (about $34,000 today) in trust for the college library. Just saying.