Revolutionary Brothers: Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Friendship that Helped Forge Two Nations

The title of this book suggests that it will be about the friendship between Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette. That is not really the case. While they became friends when Jefferson and Lafayette were both in France, and remained friends until Jefferson’s death, the book is more of a dual biography of the two men. My eyes glaze over when reading about military maneuvering, and there was quite a bit of this in the beginning of the book covering the American Revolution. Nevertheless, I found the book very readable. There was enough personal, social and political history to hold my interest. I could have done without the pointless recitation of Jefferson’s flirtations with married women. It was too gossipy for me, and certainly had nothing to do with Lafayette. <br /><br />Since I am more familiar with American history and Jefferson than I am with French history and Lafayette, the second half of the book was of more interest to me. It described the relationships among Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and Lafayette in France and also covered the French Revolution and Lafayette’s eventual imprisonment. The writing was clear and entertaining and I would read more by this author. <br /><br />I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

I picked this up to learn about the Jefferson-Lafayette friendship. While I was disappointed that while they crossed paths, they didn’t have anything like a friendship until after page 300, the considerable detail and readable narrative kept my interest.<br /><br />There is always more to learn about Jefferson. Jefferson’s role (and lack of role) in the Revolution was clarified. Chaffin explains why he has been accused of cowardice. I was not aware of <br /><br />• Jefferson’s hosting of British and German POWs during the war: how he sought them and shared meals and music and how one officer he trusted violated his release terms and rejoined the British Army.<br />• How Jefferson’s younger daughter had to be “tricked” (twice) to get her to join her father in France. Note, Sally Hemings her teenage “attendant” did not have the luxury of protesting the move.<br />• Jefferson’s 3 month tour of rural France, Germany and parts of Italy – how he traveled and what he noticed.<br />• The opulence of Jefferson’s residence in France nor the dinner he held at Lafayette’s request and its influence on events in France.<br />- How Trumbull's famous Declaration of Independence was painted... and why many paintings of this period are fiction.<br /><br />Each of these sections, while not always germane to the story was interesting and added dimension.<br /><br />While the Jefferson sections are interesting, the star of this book is Lafayette. His status at age 20 (I liked that Chaffin often refers to age) as an orphan and husband made him one of the richest men in France. Inspired by the military traditions of his noble ubringing, he left his young family to fight for liberty in Brittan’s colonies. There is good background on his leaving arrangements, how he traveled with other military volunteers and marched 100s of miles north from their South Carolina landfall to meet Gen. Washington who was not quick to give him an assignment. <br /><br />Chaffin quotes another noble on the voyage who expressed skepticism about the American colony built on land taken from natives and farmed by slavery. In all my reading of history, I have never come upon a quote expressing this kind of skepticism so early on. Was it this a commonly expressed sentiment that has escaped the record?<br /><br />In his 30’s Lafayette is back in France involved at in the military and in political strategy. He created fundamental documents for his home country’s revolution, giving citizens rights and supporting a constitutional monarchy. Chaffin gives a strip down, but very clear telling of the this revolution. You see Lafayette no longer a callow soldier of fortune but a man using his celebrity to help moderate and steer the path of his country’s revolution. Chaffin refers to “missteps” he made, but it seems that he was the fall guy for the overreach of the monarchists.<br /><br />When Lafayette is imprisoned in Prussia as a radical (anti-monarchist), his wife, who to this point seemed sweet and shy, found a way out of France, campaigned internationally for his release and then traveled to stay with him in prison. <br /><br />Lafayette goaded his American colleagues about slavery and seemed to be ahead of the abolitionists in that he sees the slaves as real people. He arranged freedom for a slave who did not get the promised freedom for his spying for the continental army. Among his cultural and charitable endeavors was a Caribbean plantation that was to experiment with freeing its workers. There is no real report on this other than that the project had to be abandoned when he lost his fortune.<br /><br />I don’t know the background well enough to know if there is anything new here or not, but the book brings together a lot of threads on these two contemporary giants. If you are interested in this period, the book is an engrossing read.

Primarily a biography of the Marquis de Lafayette and a limited biography of Jefferson. It has a great deal of detail much of which I had not known, especially about Lafayette. It was a good recitation of French and American relations and many of the issues from the revolution to the 1820's. My admiration for Lafayette is enhanced. The book does not center on the friendship of the two titled founders and indeed discusses many of the early leaders of the times discussed. Thank you to my friend Louise for recommending this book.

The title is misleading, in that is implies a focus on a relationship that in truth was a small part of two quite remarkable lives.<br /><br />Chaffin does a terrific job of sketching the lives of both men, and where they intersected--first early in the Revolution, when the young and eager La Fayette came to North America seeking glory, then when Jefferson went to France on the eve of its Revolution, and threw himself into the high life among the (doomed) aristocrats, and finally when La Fayette needed rescuing as his own country turned on this idealistic adventurer.<br /><br />There are more detailed biographies of both out there (for fascinating detail and sheer readability, I recommend Claude Manceron's masterful multi-volume history of the period), but this one serves as an absorbing introduction to both men and their influence as the two countries experienced revolution.<br /><br />And toward the end, we do get a look at the promised relationship!<br /><br />Copy provided by NetGalley

I was pleasantly surprised by Tom Chaffin's new book "Revolutionary Brothers". <br /><br />The novel gives a short but very detailed dual biography of Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de LaFayette. As a good American, I know many facts and details of Mr. Jefferson's life, however, this book gave me a better insight into his life before and after making a huge impact on American History.<br /><br />The story of the Marquis de LaFayette's life was very fascinating, and his rise and fall of power have been very intriguing. He has left tremendous footsteps in American history, and unfortunately is not fully recognized by it. <br /><br />An author has written a history that reads like a novel, which makes it so easy to read. He characterized the friendship of two extraordinary people in a remarkable manner. Thanks to him, I learned so much more about American History. Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for a free and advanced copy of the novel.

Pity the poor modern biographer. With reams of biographies literally overloading the book shelves, and the lives of most prominent historical figures documented ad nauseam, there’s precious little new ground for the biographer to cover. A relatively recent trend, therefore, is to focus on the relationships between two or more historical figures, bringing new perspective to their individual lives through the lens of this personal connection.<br /><br />Tom Chaffin’s <i>Revolutionary Brothers</i> adopts this construct with two significant figures from the birth of the modern democratic movement: Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette. The challenge then is to convince us that their relationship was not only meaningful to one another, but also historically significant.<br /><br />Given this goal, the focus of <i>Revolutionary Brothers</i> becomes not the American Revolution, but the five years during the late 1780s when Jefferson served as an American diplomat in Paris, a time when Lafayette became increasingly involved in the burgeoning French democracy movement, leading to the tumultuous period of the French Revolution.<br /><br />But first Chaffin gives us background on his subjects’ earlier lives, focusing on their important individual roles in the American Revolution. The main narrative opens in 1777, when the ship carrying Lafayette to America arrives off course, forcing the young noblemen into an uncomfortable overland journey through the South, until finally crashing a taciturn George Washington’s forty-fifth birthday party in Philadelphia.<br /><br />From here, Chaffin turns back—briefly—to cover Jefferson’s early life and career, including his work on the Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation as a member of the Continental Congress. More gripping than this well-trodden tale, however, is the story of Lafayette’s recruitment by the American diplomat Silas Deane back in France, who overstated his authority in promising Continental Army commissions not only to the teenage Lafayette, but also to other European soldiers who would go on to play prominent roles in the American Revolution—including Johann “Baron de” Kalb (no nobleman, though he presented himself as such) and the Irish-born, French officer Thomas Conway, instigator of the infamous, though exaggerated, “Conway Cabal.”<br /><br />Despite Washington’s initial reservations, the irrepressible Lafayette soon proved himself a worthy addition to the Continental officer corps, earning a place among Washington’s military “family” (as famously documented in the play Hamilton). Chaffin’s narrative accelerates here, documenting Lafayette’s increasing prominence in the battles at Brandywine (September 11, 1777) and Monmouth (June 28, 1778), until taking on his most important military role in 1781 as commander of Continental forces in Virginia, where he participated in the campaign leading to the British surrender at Yorktown that October. Also during this period, we have the true beginnings of Lafayette’s relationship with Jefferson—who served as Virginia’s governor during much of this time.<br /><br />Yet even as Chaffin focuses on Lafayette’s American Revolution military service, he takes time to develop a key theme: Lafayette’s moral opposition to slavery compared to Jefferson’s ambivalence. Born in a society where slavery was outlawed—at least inside the proper boundaries of France—and privileged with inherited wealth, Lafayette found American slavery morally disturbing and continued to argue against it throughout his life.<br /><br />The friendship of Jefferson and Lafayette truly blossomed after Jefferson was sent to Paris. While Jefferson acclimated to French culture and began a series of “affectionate” friendships with prominent doyennes of French society, Lafayette became a leading advocate for the democratic principles he so admired in America. As a “revolutionary,” Lafayette walked a fine line between attempts to empower France’s peasant class, its “Third Estate,” and maintaining the privileges of its noble one. Ultimately, he failed, though not before his significant contribution to the influential “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen,” aided by Jefferson’s anonymous—though still influential—editorial input.<br /><br />But it is also during this period when Jefferson likely began a sexual relationship with the teenage slave Sally Hemmings, and Chaffin does not spare him for his moral failings, noting that the future president later coerced Hemmings into a return to America by promising her freedom there—a guarantee he only honored upon his death. In contrast, she would have been freed if she refused Jefferson’s offer and stayed in France.<br /><br />Lafayette’s revolutionary equivocations served him poorly during the bloody days of the French Revolution. Distrusted both by its fanatical zealots within France, and its monarchical opponents without, Lafayette spent much of the French Revolution in an Austrian prison. Now vice president, Jefferson sympathized with Lafayette’s fate, though there was little he could do to help in an official capacity. By the end of their lives, Lafayette had finally returned to France, where he was allowed a quiet retirement on one of his family’s hereditary estates, while Jefferson enjoyed the same fate at Monticello—still tended by Sally Hemmings and his other slaves.<br /><br />That both Jefferson and Lafayette played a reciprocal role in the revolutionary efforts of their respective countries is indisputable. The challenge for Chaffin is showing the progression of this relationship over 450 pages. In truth, there may not be enough documentary evidence to support the task. Aside from Jefferson’s residency in Paris, their relationship was tenuous for much of their lives. But even when Chaffin struggles to depict the relationship as meaningful, the book is entertaining in its depiction of their individual lives, and those looking for an energetic account of Lafayette—focused on his role in both the American and French revolutions—will find much to enjoy. Chaffin maintains narrative drive with short, brisk chapters that typically bounce back and forth between his two subjects. But <i>Revolutionary Brothers</i> shines most when its focus is on Lafayette, who emerges as sympathetic and likeable, a true revolutionary spirit and a devoted abolitionist. If Jefferson’s narrative is less intriguing, we can hardly blame Chaffin for struggling with such a complex topic. In the case of this dual biography, the premise may prove more compelling than the particulars, though readers will still enjoy Chaffin’s lively writing and his compelling portrait of Lafayette.<br /><br /><i> <a href="https://colonialreview.com/?p=2494" rel="nofollow noopener">Read the Full Review and More</a> </i><br />

A dual biography of Jefferson and Lafayette that focuses on the periods of the American Revolution and Jefferson’s time as a diplomat in Paris. Despite the title, it is unclear that the two had a close relationship. <br />As a very occasional reader of early American history, I appreciated the fact that the author did not assume a familiarity with the details of the American Revolution. The stories of Lafayette’s quest for glory and Jefferson’s efforts to stay out of the war provide an interesting contrast. <br />The Parisian period is primarily focused on Jefferson’s social life. It was interesting but not compelling. <br />Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a prepublication ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Tom Chaffin is an excellent writer, and the prose in this work of history reads like a novel. “Revolutionary Brothers” is the story of the friendship between Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette. Two very different men, over time they became like brothers. The two of them were instrumental in the forging of two revolutions, and two countries.<br /><br />Dual biographies are always a tricky business. There is not enough space for the level of detail for each person as in a regular biography, but in this case that is an advantage as Chaffin never gets bogged down in unnecessary facts and it keeps the narrative moving along smoothly. Everyone knows that the young Marquis de Lafayette came to the New World with the French military to help the Americans win their freedom from Great Britain. And most people know that Jefferson was the American representative in France. But the relationship between the two men is not well-known, and this book rectifies that.<br /><br />For Americans, Lafayette’s life after he left our shores, is generally unknown, and it was very interesting. Jefferson’s time in France is better known, but Chaffin filled in many blanks. This was an excellent book, and I can recommend it heartily. <br /><br />Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC and PDF. The opinions are my own.<br />

An incredible book about important episodes on the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson. I liked the pace in which the book was written because even though was descriptive it had clear explanations on the protagonists. I barely knew about the life of Marquis de Lafayette, I find it very interesting. I have always admired Thomas Jefferson, the author described his time in France, England and Italy. This is the first book I read by Tom Chaffin and it won't be the last, I enjoyed enormously.

Not what I had expected; not true to the title as it takes 300+ pages to get to the Jefferson and Lafayette “friendship”; it’s really a biography of each gentleman with (first half) a lot of detail about the Revolutionary War and (second half) a lot of detail about the French Revolution. I was more surprised about the friendship between George Washington and the M. de Lafayette. Apparently Washington took him in as a “son”. I learned some things: the significant role of the Battle of Yorktown, and the timing of the French Revolution. A plodding but interesting read.