Marquis de Lafayette |
Did the Marquis de Lafayette visit Wilcox County in April
1825?
This is a question that came to mind earlier this week as I
read about Lafayette’s historic visit to Alabama 193 years ago this month.
As many of you will remember from American History class,
Lafayette was a famous French general who fought alongside George Washington
during the American Revolution. In 1824, in anticipation of the United States’
50th anniversary, President James Monroe invited Lafayette to tour
the country, which was then made up of just 24 states, including the young
state of Alabama. Lafayette was 67 years old in 1824, but he was a huge
celebrity at the time in America and abroad.
Lafayette accepted Monroe’s invitation, and he and his
entourage arrived in New York on Aug. 15, 1824. From there, he set off on a
tour of the country, which took him by stagecoach, steamboat and horseback
through New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee,
Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Maine, New Jersey and Washington, D.C. before he
returned to France on Sept. 7, 1825. Just about everywhere he went, Lafayette
was met with huge crowds, public ceremonies and artillery salutes.
Lafayette crossed the Chattahoochee River into Alabama on
March 31, 1825, and he arrived in Montgomery on April 3. On April 5,
Lafayette’s party, which was traveling down the Alabama River, visited Selma.
From there, they continued down the river to Cahaba, which was the state
capital at that time. On April 6, Lafayette’s party stopped at Claiborne, which
was then the county seat of Monroe County, where Lafayette, a prominent
Freemason, is said to have set the cornerstone for the town’s Masonic lodge.
With that said, anyone who has ever looked at a map of the
Alabama River knows that to travel down river from Cahaba to Claiborne you have
to pass through Wilcox County. My question is, did Lafayette stop in Wilcox
County between his visits to Cahaba and Claiborne? While I could find no
documentation of this, I think it’s very possible and probably likely given the
long distance between Cahaba and Claiborne.
Modern readers should remember that in April 1825, Wilcox
County was only a little over five years old, having been founded on Dec. 13,
1819. In 1825, Canton, now known as Canton Bend, was the county seat, and I
think that if Lafayette stopped anywhere in the county it would have probably
been here. Camden, which was originally known as Barboursville, didn’t become
the county seat until 1833, eight years after Lafayette passed through Wilcox
County.
With that in mind, I think it’s also possible that Lafayette
made an overland crossing of Wilcox County. As many readers know, the biggest
bend in the Alabama River is in Wilcox County. By boat in 1825, it was 40 miles
around this great bend in the river from Bridgeport to Burfords Landing, and
the distance between the two points on a straight line across the county was
only about eight miles. In the heyday of riverboat travel, travelers headed south on the river
from Montgomery commonly got off the boat at Bridgeport, traveled a short
distance overland and then caught a boat again at Burfords Landing to continue
south.
In the end, I’ve been unable to find any documented evidence
that Lafayette ever set foot in Wilcox County, but that doesn’t mean that such
evidence doesn’t exist. I think there is no doubt that he passed through Wilcox
County by boat, and he could have easily gotten off to stretch his legs if they
had to stop for fuel, mail, passengers or cargo. If anyone in the reading
audience knows more about Lafayette’s passage through Wilcox County, please let
me hear from you.
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