April 1825
Auguste Levasseur was the personal secretary of the Marquis de Lafayette and the chronicler of Lafayette’s triumphant 1824–25 tour of the United States. In addition to Levasseur, the marquis’s son, George Washington Lafayette, and his valet, Bartien, accompanied Lafayette, the last living major general of the American Revolution and a great national hero as the United States approached its fiftieth anniversary. Levasseur was an astute observer of the American scene; his account is realistic. Both he and Lafayette are more interested in the Creek Indians they visited immediately before being feted in Montgomery than they are in the elite of Alabama. In fact, they brought one Creek with them to Montgomery, Chillie, the eldest son of the assassinated Creek chief, William McIntosh. Levasseur served Lafayette for three years after returning to France and did not publish the journal until 1829.
Auguste Levasseur, Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825; or Journal of a Voyage to the United States, 3 vols. Trans. John Davidson Godman (Philadelphia: Carey and Lea, 1829), II: 83–85.
We quitted Line Creek on the 3d of April, and the same day General Lafayette was received at Montgomery, by the inhabitants of that village, and by the governor of the state of Alabama, who had come from Cahawba with all his staff and a large concourse of citizens, who had assembled from great distances to accompany him. We passed the next day at Montgomery, and left it on the night of the 4th and 5th, after a ball, at which we had the pleasure of seeing Chilli M’Intosh dance with several beautiful women, who certainly had little idea that they were dancing with a savage. The parting of M’Intosh with the general was a melancholy one. He appeared overwhelmed with sinister presentiments. After having quitted the general and his son, he met me in the courtyard; he stopped, placed my right hand on his, and elevating his left hand towards heaven, “Farewell,” said he, “always accompany our father and watch over him. I will pray to the Great Spirit also to watch over him, and give him a speedy and safe return to his children in France. His children are our brothers; he is our father. I hope that he will not forget us.” His voice was affected, his countenance sad, and the rays of the moon falling obliquely on his dark visage, gave a solemnity to his farewell with which I was deeply moved. I wished to reply to him, but he quitted me precipitately and disappeared.
At two o’clock in the morning, we embarked on the Alabama, on board the steamboat Anderson, which had been richly and commodiously prepared for the general, and provided with a band of musicians sent from New Orleans. All the ladies of Montgomery accompanied us on board, where we took leave of them; and the moment the reports of the artillery announced our departure, immense fires were lighted on the shore. Our voyage as far as the Tombigbee was delicious. It is difficult to imagine any thing more romantic than the elevated, gravelly, and oftentimes wooded shores of the Alabama. During the three days we were on it, the echoes repeated the patriotic airs executed by our Louisiania musicians. We stopped one day at Cahawba, where the officers of government of the state of Alabama had, in concert with the citizens, prepared entertainments for General Lafayette, as remarkable for their elegance and good taste, as touching by their cordiality and the feelings of which they were the expression. Among the guests with whom we sat down to dinner, we found some countrymen whom political events had driven from France. They mentioned to us, that they had formed part of the colony at Champ D’Asile. They now lived in a small town they had founded in Alabama, to which they had given the name Gallopolis [today’s Demopolis]. I should judge that they were not in a state of great prosperity. I believe their European prejudices, and their inexperience in commerce and agriculture, will prevent them from being formidable rivals of the Americans for a length of time.
Cahawba, the seat of government of Alabama, is a flourishing town, whose population, although as yet small, promises to increase rapidly, from its admirable situation at the confluence of the Cahawba and Alabama.
The state of Alabama, which, like Mississippi, was formerly part of Georgia, and with which its early history is intimately connected, received a territorial governor from congress in 1817, and was admitted into the federation as an independent state in 1816 [1819]. Its population, which in 1810 was only 10,000, had risen to 67,000 in 1817, and is at present 128,000. In this estimate of the population I do not include the Indian tribes of Choctaws, Cherokees, and Chickasaws, residing in the east and west of the state.
From Cahawba we descended the river to Claiborne, a small fort on the Alabama. The general was induced by the intreaties of the inhabitants to remain a few hours, which were passed in the midst of the most touching demonstrations of friendship. Mr. Dellet, who had been appointed by his fellow citizens to express their sentiments, acquitted himself with an eloquence we were astonished to meet in a spot, which, but a short time before, only resounded with the savage cry of the Indian hunter.
A little below Claiborne, I remarked that the banks of the Alabama were much lower; when we had passed the mouth of the Tombigbee, we found ourselves in the middle of low marshy meadows, but apparently very fertile. Finally, we arrived on the 7th of April, in Mobile bay, at the bottom of which is situated a city of the same name.
The distance we had traversed in three days, and which was more than three hundred miles, on account of the windings of the river, formerly required a month or six weeks in ascending, and half the time in descending. This shows what a prodigious revolution the application of steam to navigation will effect the commercial relations of a country.
The city of Mobile, which is the oldest establishment in the state . . .