ALS signed “Lafayette,” one page, 6 x 7.5, November 7, 1828. Letter addressed to “My dear Bradford.” In part: “I am much obliged to you for the care you have taken of my letters, and hope before long to offer my thanks in person as I contemplate going to town Saturday so as to be in time to deliver into your hands at Mr. Low's house my American dispatches. I have also to confer with him and you respecting several copies in French and English of which Mr. Sparks has not doubt already spoken to Mr. Low. I will make a list of the American ladies now in Paris to call upon them in the short stay, two days, I think, which I intend to remain in France, and should you hear of any of our friends intending a kind of visit to us be pleased to inform them of my plan that I may be sure now to take the opportunity to welcome them at La Grance…I see in the French papers that the return of N. Y. elections has not been favourable to the Adams ticket.” In a postscript, he reports "We have good news from Grenoble. When George [his son] was last in that city he had a most kind welcome and was particularly gratified by the attention. His friends had to play American Tunes, Washington's March, and Yankee Doodle.” Several intersecting folds, a uniform shade of mild toning, and a small area of paper loss to lower left corner, otherwise fine condition.
Lafayette did more than just fight alongside the colonialists during the American Revolution—he became an honored part of the nation’s history…an ‘honorary American.’ Though a Frenchman at heart, Lafayette loved his adopted homeland, where he was feted as an honored guest four years before this was dispatched. Here, four years later, he joyfully makes reference to “Yankee Doodle” and notes that he still keeps tabs on the nation he helped forged, referring to the defeat of the incumbent president, John Quincy Adams, as he read “in the French papers that the return of N. Y. elections has not been favourable to the Adams ticket.” Upon Layette’s 1834 death, it was Adams, now a congressman, who led America in a deep and universal mourning, echoing a promise made to Lafayette a decade earlier that ‘we shall look upon you always as belonging to us, during the whole of our life, as belonging to our children after us. You are ours by more than patriotic self-devotion…ours by that tie of love, stronger than, which has linked your name for endless ages of time with that of Washington.’ Pre-certified PSA/DNA and RR Auction COA.
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