National Friendship Day: August 6

Today is National Friendship Day, and to celebrate, we’re showcasing a vivid letter from the Gilder Lehrman Collection that shows the enduring strength of friendship forged in war. In January 1784, the Marquis de Lafayette, back home in France, wrote a warm letter to Henry Knox. Both men had served as generals in the Revolutionary War, and the hardships and triumphs they shared had nurtured a strong bond. Lafayette affirmed his attachment to Knox despite their great distance, and implored his friend to keep in touch:

You know my tender affection to you, my dear knox, it is Engraved in my Heart, and I shall keep it as long as I live - from the Begining of our great Revolution which Has Been the Begining of our Acquaintance, we Have Been Actuated By the same principles, [impressed] with the same ideas, Attached to the same friends, and we Have warmly loved and Confidentially Entrusted each other.

Lafayette, while happy to hear that peace was being restored in America, admitted that he had mixed feelings about the disbanding of the Continental Army and the scattering of the men he called brothers. He lamented,

I Could not Help sighing at the first news that the Continental Army was no more – We Have so intimately so Brotherly lived together, We Have Had so much to fear, so much to Hope, we Have United ourselves through to many Changes of fortune, that the parting Moment Cannot But Be painfull.