Carolina QuotesI would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America, if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery.
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette Connected to the Carolinas
Source
As quoted in a letter by Thomas Clarkson (3 October 1845), published in The Liberty Bell (1846), p. 64
- year
- 1845
- locator
- p. 64
Cite this record
“I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America, i…” Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-3BD0B55067. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/3bd0b55067
More from Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette
Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.
An irresistible passion that would induce me to believe in innate ideas, and the truth of prophecy, has decided my career. I have always loved liberty with the enthusiasm which actuates the religious man with the passion of a lover, and with the conviction of a geometrician. On leaving college, where nothing had displeased me more than a state of dependance, I viewed the greatness and the littleness of the court with contempt, the frivolities of society with pity, the minute pedantry of the army with disgust, and oppression of every sort with indignation. The attraction of the American revolution transported me suddenly to my place. I felt myself tranquil only when sailing between the continent whose powers I had braved, and that where, although our arrival and our ultimate success were problematical, I could, at the age of nineteen, take refuge in the alternative of conquering or perishing in the cause to which I had devoted myself.
If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the Romish clergy.