LAFAYETTE, Gilbert du Motier, marquis de [Toast 16] Document autographe signé Bunker Hill, Charlestown, Boston, 17 juin 1825 14 lignes
Estimation :
5000 / 8000
Adjudication :
Invendu
Description
TOAST DE BUNKER HILL, BATAILLE INAUGURALE DE LA GUERRE D’INDÉPENDANCE. EXEMPLAIRE DE LAFAYETTE. TOAST OF BUNKER HILL, INAUGURAL BATTLE OF THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. LAFAYETTE’S COPY “Gal Lafayette rose and expressed himself in the following words. Gentlemen, I will no longer trespass on your time than to thank you in the name of my Revolutionary companions in arms and (?) for the testimonies of affection, I may say, of filial affection which have been bestowed upon us on the memorable celebration of this anniversary day, and to offer our fervent prayers for the preservation of that republican freedom, equality and self government, that blessed Union Democracy the states of the confederacy for which we have fought and bled and on which rest the hopes of mankind, permit me to propose the following sentiment : Bunker’s Hill and the Holy Resistance to oppression which has already enfranchised the American Hemisphere. The next half century jubilee’s toast shall be to enfranchised Europe" “The most important ceremony commemorating the Revolution brought Lafayette back to Boston to mark the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill. On June 17, 1825, an estimated 200,000 onlookers lined the roads leading to this venerated place where patriots besieging Boston had demonstrated they could stand and fight and hold their own against regular British troops. The ceremonies on Bunker Hill that day began with the dedication of a monument memorializing the battle. Lafayette was called upon to lay the cornerstone. Then the famed orator, Congressman Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, delivered a long and stirring speech before 15,000 spectators seated in a wooden amphitheater built around the crest of Bunker Hill. After paying tribute to the old veterans of the battle, Webster turned to Lafayette. “You are connected with both hemispheres and with two generations," he intoned. “Heaven saw fit to ordain the electric spark of liberty should be conducted, through you, from the New World to the Old." Lafayette and some 4,000 others then sat down at a banquet under an enormous wooden canopy. It was, he wrote to his children in France, “the most beautiful patriotic fete ever celebrated." To this assemblage he offered a toast with a provocative hope that resonated back home in Europe". (Levasseur, Lafayette in America, II, p. 205)
