Lafayette Meets Washington
Lafayette, We Come!
The Story of How a Young
Frenchman Fought for Liberty
in America and How America
Now Fights for Liberty in France
By
Author of “Historic Boyhoods,” “The Knights
of the Golden Spur,” etc.
PHILADELPHIA
GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1918, by
George W. Jacobs & Company
All rights reserved
Printed in U. S. A.
To
Those Men of the Great Republic
Who Have Answered
The Call of Lafayette,
Lover of Liberty
Illustrations
Lafayette meets WashingtonFrontispiece
Facing page
Lafayette, a Prussian prisoner226
“America’s Answer”302
Foreword
In 1777 the young Marquis de Lafayette, only nineteen years old, came from France to the aid of the Thirteen Colonies of North America because he heard their cry for liberty ringing across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1917 the United States of America drew the sword in defense of the sacred principle of liberty for which the country of Lafayette was fighting. The debt of gratitude had never been forgotten; the ideals of the gallant Frenchman and of the young Republic of the Western World were the same; what he had done for us we of America are now doing for him.
It is a glorious story, and one never to be forgotten while men love liberty and truth. Every boy and girl should know it, for it is the story of a brave, generous, noble-minded youth, who gave such devoted service to America that he stands with Washington and Lincoln as one of the great benefactors of our land. “I’m going to America to fight for freedom!” he cried; and the cry still rings in our ears more than a century later. The message is the same one we hear to-day and that is carrying us across the Atlantic to France. From Lafayette’s story we learn courage, fidelity to honor, loyalty to conviction, the qualities that make men free and great. The principles of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” of France are the same as those of our own Declaration of Independence, and the men of the countries of Washington and Lafayette now fight under a common banner. “Lafayette, we come!”