Editor’s note: This is the fourteenth in a series of articles leading up to the Lafayette Farewell Tour Bicentennial celebration. Previous articles are available at suffolkva250.com/history.
By Frank and Gloria Womble
Lafayette’s triumphal 13-month Farewell Tour of the United States is well underway. After the joyous welcome in New York Harbor on Aug.16, 1824, and four days of nearly continuous celebration, he visited towns in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Delaware. Not to be outdone by New York, Philadelphians welcomed him with stunning pageantry at the end of September. Lafayette gave an impassioned speech at the Old State House, where the Second Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence. This event helped save the building from destruction. We know it today as Independence Hall, where the ringing of the Liberty Bell in July 1776 proclaimed a new nation.
After visiting Baltimore, Washington, Arlington, and Alexandria, Lafayette embarked on the Potomac River on his first journey southward in mid-October. He stopped at Mount Vernon on Oct. 17, where he met with members of the Washington family and paid his respects at Washington’s tomb before continuing to Yorktown.