March 15

[On March 15, 1793, while serving as Secretary of State under George Washington, I dispatched this official directive from Philadelphia to Gouverneur Morris, our United States Minister to France. At this critical juncture, Europe was fracturing under the strain of the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Marquis de Lafayette, a beloved hero of our own revolution, had been declared a traitor by French radicals, forced to flee, and subsequently captured and imprisoned by Austrian authorities. I authorized Morris to use the full diplomatic weight of our young republic to secure Lafayette's freedom, instructing him to employ everything from informal whispers to formal state appeals to persuade his captors. Our young government was so desperate to save our old comrade in arms that I explicitly authorized Morris to promise American diplomatic favor and a reciprocation of kind offices to any foreign power willing to release him.]

The President has seen with satisfaction, that the ministers of the United States in Europe, while they have avoided an useless commitment of their nation on the subject of the Marquis de La Fayette, have nevertheless shown themselves attentive to his situation. The interest which the President himself, and our citizens in general, take in the welfare of this gentleman, is great and sincere, and will entirely justify all prudent efforts to serve him. I am therefore to desire, that you will avail yourself of every opportunity of sounding the way towards his liberation, of finding out whether those in whose power he is are very tenacious of him, of insinuating through such channels as you shall think suitable, the attentions of the government and people of the United States to this object, and the interest they take in it, and of procuring his liberation by informal solicitations, if possible. But if formal ones be necessary, and the moment should arrive when you shall find that they will be effectual, you are authorized to signify, through such channel as you shall find suitable, that our government and nation, faithful in their attachments to this gentleman for the services he has rendered them, feel a lively interest in his welfare, and will view his liberation as a mark of consideration and friendship for the United States, and as a new motive for esteem and a reciprocation of kind offices towards the power to whom they shall be indebted for this act.