David A. Clary Delivers Convocation Address

He stresses the importance of learning from the past

David A. Clary, author of Adopted Son: Washington, Lafayette, and the Friendship that Saved the Revolution, delivered the main address today at the Convocation opening Lafayette’s 176th academic year.

• Listen to the address here.
  

Thank you. I don’t know if I can live up to that introduction or not.

I see you sitting out there saying, “Now what’s this old guy going to lecture to us about?” One of the worst parts of being a kid – and I remember this well – is being reminded that you are a kid, or worse, just a kid. So, I imagine you have done a lot of adolescent eye-rolling during this orientation period as the grown-ups try to advise you not to repeat the mistakes they made. However, someday you will be lecturing your own children and realize with a shock that you sound just like your own parents.

The oldest lament in human language is “What’s the matter with kids these days?” As we – you – grow older, we forget that adolescence is a miserable period when everything happens to us for the first time. The memory of misery is replaced with happy days, and we forget as our youngsters torment us, as once we tormented our elders in pretty much the same way. So I say this to the grown-ups in this group: today’s kids are what we were. And here’s something even scarier for you youngsters from your elders: we are what you will become.

Here’s something even more startling. Odds are that most of us in this place should be dead by now. For tens of thousands of years, our lives were done before we were 20. Then came agriculture and civilization and for thousands more years the typical human was orphaned by his or her teens, already producing children, and only then became able to fend for themselves before they were orphaned. The life span topped out at 28, and it still does in some countries. Two hundred years ago, the average American was dead by 38. One hundred years ago, it was 48, which is also the average life span of our teeth. Today, thanks to history, we outlive our teeth. (You don’t believe me, ask one of your archaeology professors about that.)

There have always been exceptions to the dreary course of civilized life among the well-fed classes, the nobility, the rich. Like it or not, their lives were more like yours, because they enjoyed, if that’s really the word, adolescence – a delay of adulthood – so they could learn and prepare themselves for long lives at the top of the heap, annoying their parents and teachers by rebelling against being kept “just kids.” Today this extra phase of life has become general, at least in wealthy nations. We are all in the well-fed class, chafing at our elders when we were young, wanting to lunge into a world we scarcely understand, resisting grown-ups that say we don’t know enough yet. So take comfort: you’ve beaten the odds and lived long enough to look forward to another life ahead, which begins here at Lafayette College.

You enjoy the gift of a second life. What will you do with this prize? You will, I hope, learn from the millions of people who have preceded you, so that some day you will really understand that the world did not begin the day you were born – even that your generation was not the first to discover sex. Then you will know that no problem is insoluble given persistence and knowledge.

Now how better to begin this education, which is what learning from the world’s experience is called nowadays, than with Lafayette College’s namesake, the Marquis de Lafayette. No doubt you have heard the yarn about the rich French nobleman who came here during our revolution to lend his all to the cause of liberty and democracy. That’s the sort of cartoon that makes you say, “I don’t like history.”

Try this instead. When Lafayette arrived in America, he was really a self-centered teenager running away from home, aiming to win boyish glory in battle. Ideas of liberty and democracy had never invaded his young mind. Thank goodness his story did not end there.

Once in America, he fell under the spell of George Washington, an older, wiser man who became the father he had never known. Under Washington’s guidance Lafayette became not only a brilliant leader of soldiers, but he also grew up. His horizons expanded to include radical (for a Royalist) notions of freedom, democracy, and liberty for all. He became a slavery abolitionist, probably the most influential one in the world (recent movies not withstanding) – a supporter of independence and democratic movements everywhere, and the world’s loudest promoter of religious freedom and tolerance. And he even had countervailing effects on his adopted father Washington, who became the only founding father to free his own slaves.

Now, how did Lafayette grow up from boyhood to be the man he became? By learning from Washington and others and, with the benefit of that guidance, learning from his own experience. He made mistakes, in other words, but he profited from them and kept doing so to the end of his life. Still an adolescent, he acted as if his elders, even Washington, could teach him nothing. Gradually he understood that he could not learn without first learning from others. So, a brash kid gradually became a brilliant soldier, a democrat, and a liberator. Here’s the story of how Lafayette learned from his elders and from his own mistakes and became a hero.

In May 1778 at Valley Forge, Washington decided to take a chance with this 20-year-old and sent him on a reconnaissance toward Philadelphia with about a quarter of the Continental Army. Imagine what a big risk that is. It was the Marquis’ first independent command and Washington gave him unusually detailed guidance in his orders. When he led his troops out, Lafayette should have understood clearly that he was to gather intelligence but avoid being detected. The best way to do that was to not spend too much time in any one spot. Above all, he was to keep in touch with the main army, making sure that he was not cut off.

But the day was warm, the greenery was sprouting, the birds were singing, and he was so full of himself that he ignored what Washington had told him. After marching about halfway to Philadelphia, he reached the top of a broad rise called Barren Hill. It’s now called Lafayette Hill, if you know the area. The place had a nice view of the countryside and was a good base from which to send out scouting parties and spies. Lafayette ordered his men to camp there.

Despite Washington’s warnings, he stayed for two nights, and on the evening of May 19th, the enemy found him. The British commander sent three strong detachments against the Marquis and, circled on three sides, trapped against bluffs above a river, “the boy,” as the Redcoats called him, would have to surrender.

Lafayette learned he was about to be cut off on the morning of May 20th. When he asked for more information, he heard that a column was marching towards his left. He shifted his front and covered it with some houses, a little woods, and a cemetery. No sooner had he done that than he learned he had been cut off from the rear and that a third British column was coming up the road from Philadelphia.

Lafayette should not have stayed in the place two nights and should have had more pickets farther out. He had, however, a narrow avenue of escape along the river, so he formed his men and headed out there. He sent out small detachments to snipe at the enemy, then fade into the woods. This slowed the encircling forces enough that the army retreated smartly behind its rear guard. No casualties, by the way.

The Redcoats did not know what had happened to them. They had been fooled into thinking they were up against a larger force than Lafayette had. His feints and dodges completely flustered the troops closing in on them. When he got back to Valley Forge, he was a Continental hero. His failure to complete his mission and his nearly letting himself be trapped were forgotten, erased by the brilliance of the retreat. Making the Redcoats look like fools more than made up for his errors.

The boy general, as all of us do sometimes, screwed up by not following the advice of his superior, the orders of his superior. He began to grow up, however, when he owned up to what he had done and knew he would have to solve his own problem with his own wits, and he did.

Three years later he received an independent command in Virginia where he out-foxed the fearsome Cornwallis and bottled him up at Yorktown. He brought the American cause closer to victory by applying the lessons of experience, his own and others.

As an aside while we focus on Lafayette, I could ask whether you ever said to yourself in a fit of adolescent resentment, “Just wait! Someday I’ll be famous, and then they’ll see!” At your stage of life if you haven’t felt that way yet, you will. Here’s some comfort: that actually happened to Lafayette. The only person in history who ever got to live out that fantasy, he gives hope to us all.

There is more to life and to history than public deeds. If you read my account of the relation between Lafayette and Washington, Adopted Son (and you will have book reports to do after all), you will discover a story of a close emotional bond that had its own impact on history. Washington and Lafayette fell in love with each other, and the bond guided the rest of their lives. There is a story here of love between men that was fully in keeping with the society of their times and should not raise the sexual obsessions of our own day. The past is not the present, and we should not impose our current outlook on it. That, I hope, is something else you will learn at this college named for Lafayette.

Speaking of sex – I got your attention didn’t I? – I’d also observe that Lafayette’s extramarital sex life can he described only has Homeric. He chased other women while he was married to a beautiful girl who became, in her own right, one of the most remarkable women in history. I fell in love with Adrienne while I was writing the book and was disappointed in how her husband treated her, until he redeemed himself. At the age of 40, Lafayette fell deeply in love with his own wife, and you can see the sudden and dramatic change in the letters to her. They became real love letters, as tender and affectionate as were ever written by anybody. That was where Lafayette grew up at last, becoming a good man in every way.

As you can see, history involves more than dates and great events. It is the story of our species, and because we are the third stupidest animals on earth, after turkeys and horses, what our predecessors have done is entertaining as well as informative.

History is also a source of trivial, but interesting, information. Did you ever wonder why men’s suit coats have useless buttons on the sleeves? Did you ever wonder how pumpernickel bread ever got its name? Do you understand why the arrangement of letters on your computer keyboard is so goofy? There are real reasons behind all of those things, but I can hear some of you math and physics and pre-med majors out there snorting, “What does history have to do with my interests?”

Well, you know that this year marks Lafayette’s 250th birthday. Have you heard that Leonhard Euler turned 300 this year? Who, you say? This is also Carl Linnaeus’ 300th year. Who again?

If you want to understand math and science, you need to understand the creative and analytic achievements that made them what they are. You business majors will be better entrepreneurs if you understand how the modern economy and its elements came to be. Want to be a rocket scientist or an astronaut? Then learn how Robert Goddard worked out the principles that still govern trips to Mars. Want to be an airline or military pilot? Understand how Jimmy Doolittle and Harry Guggenheim invented instrument flying.

Be grateful that you are at a liberal arts college where your professors will force you to get a broader education. That will make you flexible – adaptable to changes in the world and in yourself. Do not think that you have to decide now what to do with the rest of your life. The economy will change, opportunities unforeseen will offer themselves, and, most important, you and your interests will change.

Don’t be afraid of change. Prepare for it by taking advantage of the opportunities this college holds out for you. Make no mistake about it, you will change. Lafayette changed, and now look at all of the places that are named for him. You could be the next Lafayette.

Thank you.