Honoring the
Marquis de Lafayette
The College is planning a yearlong celebration of the life and legacy of
the man for whom it is named, the Marquis de Lafayette, in observance of the 250th anniversary of the Marquis’ birth on Sept. 6, 1757.
“Throughout the coming year the College will celebrate the 250th birthday of Lafayette, one of the truly great and remarkable people in history, with special events that remind us of how applicable, especially in the global sense,
the connection between a free society and an educated citizenry is today,” says President Daniel Weiss.
“It is the College’s good fortune to be associated with an individual who was so deeply dedicated to freedom and liberty. Lafayette believed fully in the ideal of true liberty because he understood it as ‘the fruition of the enactment of the rights of man.’ His life was a superb example of global citizenship and service,” Weiss says. “As we chart the future of the College in our global society
we can do no better than to hold close to our own hearts and our ongoing sense of purpose the enduring values of the Marquis de Lafayette.”
Major events include a lecture series, entitled Lives of Liberty, featuring renowned speakers; a historical exhibit, entitled A Son and His Adoptive Father: The Marquis de Lafayette and George Washington; and a birthday party on Sept. 6 that will include a lecture by Lloyd Kramer, author of Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolution.
Sept. 6 festivities will also include the  dedication of a Pennsylvania state historical marker commemorating the meeting of Easton citizens in December 1824 that led to the College’s founding, an all-College dinner on the Quad, an encampment by Revolutionary War re-enactors, and more. Kramer’s talk, “Lafayette’s Historical Legacy: Politics, Culture, and the Modern World,” will be the John L. Hatfield ’67 Lecture hosted by the Friends of Skillman Library.
In the fall, the Lives of Liberty series will include distinguished scholars whose work deals with the Marquis’ life or the times in which he lived. David McCullough, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his biographies of Harry S Truman and John Adams, will kick off the series with a keynote talk Sept. 5. Ron Chernow, recipient of the inaugural George Washington Book Prize for his 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton, will speak Oct. 19. Simon Schama, author
of Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution, will also speak in the fall.
In the spring, the lecture series will feature speakers whose lives embody the ideals of Lafayette in the world today. Speakers’ names and dates will be announced.
A partnership between the College and George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens, the exhibit A Son and His Adoptive Father is on display through Aug. 5 in Mount Vernon’s new F. M. Kirby
Foundation Gallery. It will open at the College Sept. 6 and remain on view in the Williams Center Gallery through Oct. 28 before moving to the New-York Historical Society for a Nov. 13 opening.
The College is the primary lender to the exhibit, which features more than 60 items from the College’s Marquis de Lafayette collections. Among these are several of the most significant original letters that Lafayette wrote to Washington, including the 1783 letter containing Lafayette’s proposal to Washington about freeing slaves, the 1790 letter that transmitted the key to the Bastille, and letters written partially in code during the American Revolution.
There are also portraits, engravings, documents, a sword that belonged to Lafayette, china, glassware, medals, textiles, and sheet music. Many of these objects were produced as souvenirs during Lafayette’s 1824-25 Farewell Tour of America. The paintings come from the College’s art collection, including Thomas Sully’s portrait of Lafayette from the Farewell Tour and Jean-Baptiste Le Paon’s Lafayette at Yorktown.
In all, the exhibit displays more than 125 artifacts, including materials from Harvard College, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Life Guard Society of Mount Vernon, Society of the Cincinnati,
and Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association.
The U.S. House of Representatives approved a
bill honoring the Marquis’ life.
A Yearlong Celebration of Lafayette
A College web site dedicated to the celebration and to the Marquis’ unique connection to the College provides information and updates. Details about additional College events and programs will be announced as planning progresses.
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