By Donald Gilpin

Sean Wilentz

Two hundred years ago this month, Princeton University, then known as the College of New Jersey, welcomed the Marquis de Lafayette to campus and presented him with an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws in recognition of his contribution to the American cause of independence.

Lafayette was making a triumphal tour of the country at the invitation of President James Monroe and the U.S. Congress more than 40 years after the French soldier and statesman, who was a close friend of George Washington, had led the Continental Army at Yorktown in the final battle of the American Revolution.

Later this month, on September 25 at 10 a.m. as part of a 24-state tour, a Lafayette reenactor provided by the American Friends of Lafayette will share the stage with Princeton University Professor Sean Wilentz at the Nassau Presbyterian Church on Nassau Street for a public lecture on “Lafayette and the Politics of Division.”

Wilentz, an authority on U.S. social and political history, is the author of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, which won the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

“The Grand Farewell Tour of Lafayette in 824 occurred during a polarizing presidential election that was pulling the country apart,” said Wilentz. “Two hundred years later, the nation is again deeply divided amid a pivotal election.”

Lafayette, who, according to a press release from the American Friends of Lafayette, was on a mission “to remind a divided nation of its founding values,” was a strong abolitionist at a time when American politics was hotly divided over the future of slavery in the new nation.

“Many historians believe Lafayette’s farewell tour was the second most important event in American history in the 1800s, after the Civil War, of course,” said Paul Larson, who is managing New Jersey’s commemoration of the Lafayette bicentennial, which will also include visits this month to Jersey City, Elizabeth, Rahway, and Trenton between September 23 and 26. “Lafayette was the most popular person in America and attracted huge crowds. He was the original rock star.”

The September 25 presentation at the Nassau Presbyterian Church will be preceded on the evening of September 24 by a panel discussion and showing of the film Lafayette: The Lost Hero, a PBS documentary, in the Community Room of the Princeton Public Library from 7 to 8:30 p.m.

The film, which examines Lafayette’s role in the American Revolution and in the establishment of democracy in America, will be introduced by Larson and Anne de Broca-Hoppenot, honorary consul of France in New Jersey.

Princeton University’s Firestone Library has also created a virtual collection of items in its archives, available to the public online at findingaids.princeton.edu. The items include a printed invitation to a ball in Yorktown, Va., in 1824, an invitation to a sword presentation to Lafayette in New York, a badge commemorating Lafayette’s Farewell Tour, a copy of a check from the U.S. government in payment for war service, and a letter from Lafayette to Thomas Jefferson.

A September 27, 1924 article in the New York Times on the 100th anniversary of Lafayette’s visit to Princeton described the occasion in some detail. The University entertained Lafayette along with his son, George Washington Lafayette, and “a large party.”

The Times quoted the Princeton University Archives, which contain a record of the visit: “The Marquis and his escort were entertained at a late breakfast in the Princeton refectory, which was decorated beyond recognition. After looking at the buildings of the university, the Marquis was taken to a circular canopy, erected in front of Nassau Hall, for his official reception by the authorities of the college and town of Princeton, and here an address of welcome was made and the degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him.”

Lafayette, according to the University Archives, commented on the significance of the town and the University. “While the name of this city recalls important military remembrance,” he said, “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.”

For more information on Lafayette and the current “Farewell Tour,” visit lafayette200.org or friendsoflafayette.wildapricot.org.