#pg. 738

Once Washington received young Lafayette, he displayed boundless generosity toward him. Discarding earlier caution, he informed Madison that if circumstances permitted, he would take the boy 'with his tutor into my family and, in the absence of his father, to superintend his education and morals.' The sight of the boy and the 'visible distress' on his face deeply moved Washington. After hearing his heartrending pleas on his father's behalf, Washington decided, strictly as a private person, to dispatch a handwritten letter to the Austrian emperor, requesting that Lafayette be released and allowed to come to America.

In replying to Washington, Hamilton informed him that Lafayette junior was staying with him and would remain there through the spring; nevertheless he thought Washington should invite the boy to visit him. This advice threw Washington into a painful quandary. In response, he made a shrewd political move--for the first time in a long while, he consulted James Madison: 'I wish to know what you think (considering my public character) I had best do to fulfill the obligations of friendship and my own wishes without involving consequences.' In this manner Washington not only previewed Republican reactions but also forced Republicans to share responsibility in the matter. Until mid-February Washington wrestled with the issue, then asked Hamilton to send the boy and his tutor to see him in Philadelphia, 'without avowing or making a mystery of the object.' He stalled in the exact timing, however, suggesting that the two young Frenchmen should come in early April, when 'the weather will be settled, the roads good, and the traveling pleasant.' In the meantime the boy's presence in America had a galvanizing effect on Washington, who sent word to the Austrians, via their London ambassador, that Lafayette's freedom was 'an ardent wish of the people of the United States, in w[hi]ch I sincerely add mine.'

“Savage. We must explain this word. What was the aim of those bristling men who in the demiurgic days of revolutionary chaos, ragged, howling, wild, with tomahawk raised, and pike aloft, rushed over old overturned Paris? They desired the end of Opressions, the end of Tyrannies, the end of the sword, labour for man, instruction for children, social gentleness for women, liberty, equality, fraternity, bread for all, ideas for all. They were savages, yes; but the savages of civilisation.