Letter from the Marquis de Lafayette to George Washington

To mark the United States Bicentennial, members of the French Senate presented the U.S. Senate with this 1783 letter written by the Marquis de Lafayette to George Washington. The gift, which also included an early 19th-century engraving of George Washington's Farewell Address, was given at the Capitol on September 8, 1976.

This letter was in the possession of Lafayette's descendants and was kept at La Grange, his home southeast of Paris, until 1975, when René de Chambrun (Lafayette's great-great-grandson) presented it to the French Senate as a gift for the U.S. Senate. It is not known how the letter returned to Lafayette's possession, though, according to Lafayette family lore, it was returned to Lafayette by Washington's family following Washington's death in 1799.

On April 19, 1783—four days after the Continental Congress approved preliminary peace articles ending the American Revolution—Lafayette wrote to Washington from France with a mix of personal and political news. In the letter, he updates Washington on the ongoing peace negotiations between British and American diplomats in Paris and speculates about who might replace Benjamin Franklin as the Minister to France after Franklin had recently "applied for his recall." Near the end of the letter, Lafayette describes himself as Washington's "best friend" and hopes that correspondence between them will become easier with "the dangers of war being over."