Revolutionary Brothers: Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Friendship That Helped Forge Two Nations by Tom Chaffin

Abstract

Reviewed by: Revolutionary Brothers: Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Friendship That Helped Forge Two Nations by Tom Chaffin John R. Maass Revolutionary Brothers: Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Friendship That Helped Forge Two Nations. By Tom Chaffin. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2019. Pp. xii, 529. $29.99, ISBN 978-1-250-11372-6.) Author Tom Chaffin provides readers interested in the two great revolutions of the late eighteenth century with a popular history, written in a dramatic style with sections and chapters alternating in focus between Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette. Chaffin holds that Lafayette is virtually unknown in America today, and that Lafayette's efforts—along with Jefferson's—during the French Revolution are also largely obscure. "A forthright retelling of their shared story—their solitary, convergent, and divergent paths through two revolutions and their final reunion—is long overdue," Chaffin explains (p. 4). This study is, the author claims, "the first sustained account of the Jefferson-Lafayette friendship and collaboration," but it is "not intended as a joint biography or as a history of the American and French Revolutions. It seeks to capture another quarry: the story of a single, and singularly extraordinary, friendship, and its role in the making of two revolutions—and two nations" (p. 4). Beginning in medias res with Lafayette's first voyage to America in 1777, Revolutionary Brothers: Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Friendship That Helped Forge Two Nations goes on to describe the lives of the two founders from their childhoods, their early experiences during the American Revolution (both military and political), and their important roles in the French Revolution. Loaded with detail and at times fast-paced, Chaffin's book is not a thesis-driven academic work, nor does he claim it to be. Rather, it is more a chronicle of events, which, unfortunately, gets a lot of the details wrong. Chaffin is correct in pointing out that Lafayette is much less well known in the United States than Jefferson (who was fourteen years the Frenchman's senior), so the trajectory of their lives is quite interesting to compare. Both men were among the elites of their societies, were well educated, and embraced the spirit of the Enlightenment. Each regarded the American Revolution as a salient event in history, in which they played prominent, influential roles. During the French Revolution, Jefferson and Lafayette witnessed and helped shape the tumultuous events that eventually overthrew the monarchy of Louis XVI. Chaffin's chapters on this period are quite detailed, and readers learn about Lafayette's role in the early years of the French Revolution beginning in 1789 and in the Estates-General, the National Assembly, and the National Guard. Jefferson, too, was in Paris as the United States minister to France, and he facilitated Lafayette's political efforts, particularly with Lafayette's interest in a constitution. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of their relationship was a matter on which they disagreed—American slavery. Jefferson's inconsistent views and actions regarding slavery are well known, while Lafayette eventually became an ardent abolitionist. In several sections of his book, Chaffin describes Lafayette's growing opposition to slavery once he reached American shores. Then, "by 1784, having observed slavery longer and more intimately than ever before in his life, Lafayette was rethinking his views on human bondage" [End Page 910] (p. 179). Moreover, he looked into efforts to free American slaves and read more widely among enlightened abolitionist treatises as they became available. Chaffin's book has two main weaknesses. First, he seems to oversell the notion of a unique, extraordinary friendship, and the notion of a brotherhood is simply unsupportable other than in a figurative sense. The first half of his book is not about their relationship at all but is instead the sort of dual biography that the author claims he did not intend to write. In fact, as Chaffin concedes, the pair did not meet until late April 1781, after which Governor Jefferson and General Lafayette worked together until June 2 to defend Virginia from a British invasion. Thereafter they corresponded over the years and met frequently when Jefferson was...