And through the lenses of his formidable intellect and his flammable oratory, Douglass later would confront his own double-ness—his simultaneous love for, and rage at, the United States.

A packed audience at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in downtown Los Angeles wrestled with some of those same contradictions, set to the rhythms of a free-flowing conversation between Yale historian and Douglass biographer David Blight and cultural critic, comedian, and author Baratunde Thurston, who moderated.

The dialogue, titled “What Does the Life of Frederick Douglass Tell Us About America?” was a Smithsonian/ASU “What It Means to Be American” event. For Douglass, it could be said, being American meant loving the first four principles of the Declaration of Independence and the ideals of Creator-given natural rights for all, while despising the forces that undermined and degraded those ideals.

Being a scourge of American hypocrisy was a career and a calling for Douglass. “He was constantly bashing, blistering, attacking this hypocrisy,” said Blight, author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Indeed, at times it seemed to Douglass that there was “almost no reason to sustain hope in this country.” And yet, Blight added, “Douglass never stopped believing in the principles.”

It’s fitting that Douglass wrote not one, but three memoirs chronicling his emergence as the nation’s scathing conscience in the decades stretching from before the Civil War, to Reconstruction’s collapse in the 1870s, to the rise of Jim Crow. In his massive biography, Blight writes of Douglass’s escape from Baltimore bondage (disguised as a sailor) in 1838, when he was 20 years old; his flight to Massachusetts and recruitment in the growing abolitionist movement; the eloquent, charismatic persona that helped turn him into a riveting orator and a righteous adversary feared by slavery defenders and white segregationists.

Blight said he first grappled with Douglass’s monumental legacy when he was teaching high school in Flint, Michigan, and ever since then, “I’ve never quite been able to get him out of my life.” For historians, Blight said, Douglass is an irresistible subject because of his significance and because he left so much material to study. One of Douglass’s most assiduous collectors, a retired African American surgeon from Savannah, made his collections available to Blight, which launched his biographical project. “The full life of Douglass is a daunting task. I wasn’t sure that I was up to it,” Blight said.

Thurston said he gained his first awareness of Douglass from pictures on the wall of his Washington, D.C. elementary school during Black History Month. “He had a dope Afro,” Thurston joked. Today, he went on, “His Instagram would be ridiculous. He would win on the looks alone.”

Turning serious, Thurston remarked that in the summer of 2011, while he was writing his book How To Be Black, he came across Douglass’s Fourth of July speech of 1852. It was a coruscating masterpiece—Thurston praised it as, by turns, “heavy-handed,” “wildly prophetic,” “vindictive,” and “hilarious”—which Douglass delivered in Rochester, New York, the city where he lived for many years and published his abolitionist newspaper The North Star. In his speech, Douglass underscored the vast difference between what the anniversary of American independence meant for whites and for non-whites.

Asked by Thurston how Douglass deployed biting humor as a weapon, Blight affirmed that Douglass “is always and everywhere an ironist, and sometimes a satirist.”

“Largely he reacted with rage. Over time, he reacted with humor,” Blight added. In the Fourth of July speech, Douglass made his largely white audience flinch as he threw down one rhetorical thunderbolt after another. Yet, characteristically, he ended the speech on a hopeful note.

More than 150 years on, with the country once again convulsed by racist violence and polarized politics, that kind of “tail-end optimism, that faith and malleability,” is a bit harder to summon up in America, Thurston observed.

Douglass put his own allegiance to America to the test when he went on a tour of the British Isles, where he was hailed as a phenomenon. When he returned to the United States he bitterly observed, “I have no country, I have no patriotism.” His country had denied him, and he denied it back, Blight said.

But then Douglass began to become “a much more open political abolitionist,” who realized that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights might be usable, Blight said. “He is learning a kind of political pragmatism” in this period.

What Douglass came to believe was that the country, by tearing itself apart, could remake itself into something new, something possibly better.

Are we now at a similar point, Thurston asked. Are we entering a third American republic?

Blight hesitated; Thurston prodded the Ivy League historian for an answer with, “C’mon, man!”

“You know what?” Blight replied. “You’ve got to take a long view. We have been here [before].” Today, as in Douglass’s time, democracy is being threatened. American institutions are in deep trouble. But the country has had numerous racial reckonings, the scholar noted. Remember when some credulous folk were describing Barack Obama as the first “post-racial president?”

“What we keep learning is that every revolution has a counter-revolution,” Blight said. Reactionaries pushed back against Reconstruction, and, in the mid-2000s, counter-revolutionaries weren’t ready to accept a black man in the White House, he suggested. Douglass, who lived the entire trajectory of the revolution that brought rights to blacks and the counter-revolution that took them away, would understand our current national condition.

During the Q&A period, several audience members were eager to probe the parallels between Douglass’s time and ours. One asked whether there might be a grain of inadvertent truth to President Trump’s seemingly confused 2017 description of Douglass as “an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.” Could it be that we actually are tuning in more to Douglass now than we did in the past?

Blight replied that, in fact, Douglass’s own memoir was out of print for about century, until Harvard University Press published it again in 1960. So, in a sense, Douglass is more present now than he has been in previous eras, and “his narrative is taught all over the world.”

Another audience member asked about Douglass’s deliberate strategy of working with imperfect allies, including Abraham Lincoln, whom Douglass criticized ferociously for initially not “making war on slavery.” Douglass gradually learned a certain degree of political pragmatism, Blight said, as he went from being a radical outsider before the war to a political insider and bureaucrat after the war.

Responding to another questioner, Blight noted that Douglass hated the political compromises that sealed the collapse of Reconstruction. He foresaw that white reconciliation between Northerners and Southerners likely would mean the betrayal of African Americans.

Yet, Blight recounted that, while attending a conference some time ago, he’d been asked where Douglass went to find hope when hope seemed all but gone. Douglass drew it from his moral center, Blight said, and “that is a constant.”

“He endured many changes, but he never lost that moral core. In the worst of times, he could fall back on those basic moral values.”

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The practice of naming places for Lafayette began even before the Revolutionary War officially ended. On May 15, 1783—four months before the Treaty of Paris was signed—the General Assembly of North Carolina gave the name Fayetteville to a new town in Cumberland County, making it the first city in the United States to honor the Marquis. As the United States expanded west and residents of Fayetteville followed the frontier, they brought the town’s name with them. Fayetteville, Tennessee, adopted the name in 1810, and Fayetteville, Arkansas took it in 1829. In 1846 the French name moved to the other side of the continent when Lafayette, Oregon was founded by a settler who had relocated from Lafayette, Indiana.

Lafayette, Indiana had adopted the name in 1825—a year when the United States was in the grip of Lafayette-mania. Between July 1824 and September 1825, the beloved Frenchman completed a triumphal tour of all 24 states in the Union at the invitation of President James Monroe. Politicians burnished their patriotic credentials by appearing alongside the Nation’s Guest, and municipalities vied to outdo their neighbors with parades, dances, and dinners in his honor. Men, women, and children turned out in unprecedented numbers to catch a glimpse of Lafayette—a link to the nation’s founding—and entrepreneurs made a tidy profit selling commemorative memorabilia (evening gloves, baby shoes, loaves of bread) emblazoned with Lafayette’s name or face. As Lafayette toured the country, more and more localities began naming stretches of land in his honor. President’s Park, facing the White House, was re-christened Lafayette Square in 1824. Place Gravier in New Orleans, Louisiana became Lafayette Square in 1825.

Lafayette Hose Company Cape, mid-19th century. Image courtesy of Division of Home and Community Life, National Museum of American History.

In the years that followed, memories of the triumphal tour inspired dozens of towns, parks, and schools to adopt names including Lafayette, La Grange (Lafayette’s chateau, about 30 miles east of Paris), and variations on the theme. In Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, local lore has it that an attorney named James Madison Porter was among the throng welcoming Lafayette to Philadelphia in 1824. During a brief conversation with the general, Porter had been moved to learn that the aging hero remembered Porter’s father and uncle as “good soldiers” during the Revolutionary War. Two years later, when Porter spearheaded the establishment of a college in Easton, Pennsylvania, the institution took the name Lafayette College.

When the United States came to the aid of France by entering World War I, another round of Lafayette commemorations began. In 1916 a group of American pilots fighting in the French Air Service dubbed themselves the Lafayette Escadrille. Most famously, perhaps, on July 4, 1917, Colonel Charles E. Stanton made it clear that the United States was repaying its revolutionary-era debt when he stood at Lafayette’s graveside in Paris’s Picpus Cemetery and declared “Lafayette, we are here!”

As the 20th century wore on, Lafayette’s name spread into nearly every corner of American culture. Lafayette cars were manufactured in Indiana in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1970, a basset hound named Lafayette appeared in the animated Disney film The Aristocats. And, on a 2015 visit to George Washington’s Mount Vernon, I bought French fries at the Lafayette Grill.

Thousands of French soldiers and sailors fought and died in the American Revolution, so why is Lafayette the first French name on every American tongue? His high rank and great wealth certainly had something to do with it: Lafayette was living, breathing evidence that the old European order had faith in a young country on the other side of the Atlantic. More important, though, might have been his earnest enthusiasm for the American cause and his unflagging determination to contribute to its success.

Lafayette Motors Co. radiator emblem, ca 1921. Image courtesy of Division of Work and Industry, National Museum of American History.

It all started on June 13, 1777, when the 19-year-old Lafayette reached North Island, South Carolina with some 20 officers and servants on a ship he had optimistically christened the Victoire—Victory. Lafayette had never seen a day of battlefield action and knew no English before he set sail, but he came filled with a burning desire to help 13 American colonies wrest their freedom from Great Britain, France’s age-old enemy.

Explaining his actions in a shipboard letter to the wife he had left in Paris, Lafayette described himself as a “defender of this freedom which I venerate” and insisted that “the happiness of America is closely tied to that of humanity.” More practical motivations had also influenced his thinking. Hailing from a line of men who fought and died for their country, Lafayette had dreamed of martial glory since childhood. But the French army quashed his hopes in 1776 when a wave of reforms removed from active duty hundreds of young officers who, like Lafayette, had risen through the ranks thanks to money and connections. Fighting under George Washington in the Continental Army represented a second chance.

Lafayette had been granted the rank of Major General by Silas Deane, one of Congress’s envoys to France, and expected to be awarded a command upon his arrival. But Congress and Washington hesitated; surely the rank was meant to be honorary. They had grown wary of the French officers who had been sailing across the Atlantic to join the American army. Although many were fine soldiers, some were mercenaries or troublemakers who had been driven from the French army. Others expressed open disdain for the American military.

Lady’s glove with a portrait of Lafayette, 1825. Image courtesy of Division of Political History, National Museum of American History.

On July 27, 1777, the same day that Lafayette and his shipmates reached Philadelphia, Washington wrote a letter from Morristown, New Jersey complaining of the influx of Frenchmen: “Almost every one of them,” he wrote, harbored “immoderate expectations” and became “importunate for offices they have no right to look for.” Massachusetts Congressman James Lovell was even more pointed in his criticism, explaining to Lafayette’s group that Deane had recruited no useful men in France, but only “some so-called engineers … and some useless artillerymen.”

America would soon learn that Lafayette was an exception. Of the officers who arrived on the Victoire, he was the only one invited to stay, with Congress evidently persuaded of his value by a letter from Silas Deane that praised not only Lafayette’s uncommon “zeal,” but also his “noble lineage, his connections, the high dignities exercised by his family at this Court, his ample possessions in the Kingdom, his personal worth, his celebrity.” As it happened, Lafayette was an exceptionally wealthy orphan who had allied himself with one of the most influential families at the French court when he married Adrienne de Noailles in 1774. What he lacked in experience he made up in funds and influence. It helped that Lafayette was immensely likeable: His straightforward demeanor and self-deprecating sense of humor sometimes rendered him out-of-place in the perfumed halls of Versailles, but they endeared him to Americans. If he was willing to forego a salary, he would be welcomed in the army.

Lafayette joined Washington’s closest circle of officers and was one of more than 10,000 American troops who awoke on the banks of Pennsylvania’s Brandywine River on the morning of September 11, 1777, awaiting a British attack. The Battle of Brandywine—Lafayette’s first—would end in a loss for the Americans, but it inaugurated the young Frenchman’s lasting American celebrity. In an account of the battle written that night, Washington mentioned the names of just two officers, reporting that “the Marquis de Lafayette was wounded in the leg, and General Woodford in the hand.” In the weeks that followed, as Lafayette was nursed back to health by the Moravian Brethren of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Washington’s letter made its way into patriot newspapers throughout the colonies. Lafayette was introduced to the American people as the French aristocrat who had shed blood on behalf of their freedom.

Thanks to careful guidance from Washington, who gently shepherded Lafayette through positions of increasing responsibility, the young man’s skills as a leader increased. In March of 1778 Lafayette put his enthusiasm for the American cause and his personable disposition to use in recruiting a group of Oneida men to fight under his command. And on June 28 his quick thinking was instrumental in salvaging a narrow victory at the Battle of Monmouth after General Charles Lee gave a disastrous order to retreat. Even more significant were the contributions Lafayette made away from the field of action. Taking every opportunity to write letters to France praising the Americans, and assuring Americans at every turn that France was on their side, Lafayette became the unofficial spokesperson for the French-American alliance.

Equestrian statue of Lafayette. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

When France pledged open support for the Americans by signing the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, Lafayette rightly took some of the credit. Hoping to be named commander of the French troops who would soon be sailing to the New World, Lafayette returned home to make his case. Although that role went to the far more senior Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau (1725-1807), Lafayette carried the news to Washington that guns, ships, and men would soon be on the way. Taking up an American command once more, Lafayette played leading roles in the Virginia campaign of 1781 and in the Siege of Yorktown that marked the last major hostilities of the American Revolution.

Lafayette returned to a political career in France, but throughout the 1780s he devoted himself to furthering America’s political and commercial interests. Sometimes working with America’s emissaries in France and sometimes acting on his own accord, Lafayette lobbied for a diplomatic post with the American government, advocated for favorable trading relations between France and the United States, and generally did what he could to help the young nation conquer the herculean task of establishing a new system of government while digging out from crushing debt. It was also important to him that the people of the United States learn of his efforts; as he put it in a 1783 letter to the American Secretary for Foreign Affairs Robert R. Livingston, “I have a great value for my American popularity.”

Around the world, Lafayette’s name became synonymous with liberty. In France, where the Revolution and Napoleon’s reign would tear society asunder, his reputation suffered ups and downs over the course of his long life. Things were different in the United States, though, in the 1820s and today. Thanks to the scores of places that bear his name, his American popularity lives on. As Lin-Manuel Miranda put it in his 2015 hit musical Hamilton, Lafayette remains “America’s favorite fighting Frenchman.”

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When railroads emerged in the U.S. in the 1830s and 1840s, cargo-carrying trains were exceedingly short, handling only a few cars. By the 1850s, locomotives had become more powerful, track structures stronger, traffic increased, and individual railroads longer. Something more was needed to keep the trains on track. The engineer, fireman, and brakeman remained in the locomotive. But what about the conductor, “the captain,” who had legal authority over the train? And the one or two additional brakemen who helped to manage the primitive hand-braking system and throw switches as cars were picked up and set out? The caboose provided a shelter for the conductor and brakemen along with a heating/cooking stove, seats, and make-shift beds. It also included a desk and chair for the conductor. The caboose or caboose car was also a place to store shovels, brooms, wrenches, chains, couplers, lanterns, and other paraphernalia. It was basically a utilitarian add-on to a freight train.

A variety of cabooses appeared across the United States. Early on they were mostly modified boxcars and then custom four-wheel contraptions, many of which remained in service for decades. Later trunk carriers led the movement for eight-wheel or double-truck cabooses. A most distinctive change occurred in the 1860s, when the Chicago & North Western Railway introduced the cupola caboose, a feature that gave crew an excellent way to watch a moving train for any operational difficulties and gave it a most distinctive design. And in the early 1920s the Akron, Canton & Youngstown Railroad became the first to adopt the bay window caboose. It easily cleared overpasses and tunnels while still providing good crew visibility of the train. The penultimate design came with the extended-vision caboose, where the cupola was pushed out on both sides. Over time, too, largely wooden construction gave way to all-metal fabrication; tens of thousands of cabooses of all styles were built.

It did not take long before the word “caboose” entered the popular American vocabulary. It’s a totally unique name. While its origins may be Dutch or French, its etymology is obscure. There is a consensus that the word dates from the 18th century and probably refers to the cookhouse on the deck of a ship. Yet not every domestic railroad called this employee carriage a caboose. The Pennsylvania Railroad used the term “cabin car,” and the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad called it a “way car.” Railroaders, though, had a variety of distinctive nicknames for the caboose, including “buggy,” “chariot,” “crummy,” “shack,” and “shanty.”

While red became the common caboose color because of its widespread usage on rolling stock and station structures, a railroad might select brown, yellow, or something else. In the 20th century, it was not unheard of to see multi-colored cabooses in combinations including red and white or some other paint combination. Never the less, red stands out as the color most associated with the caboose, being long remembered even after this equipment faded away.

Since World War II, railroads have made monumental changes in their operations. The most obvious has been the diesel locomotive revolution. By the late 1950s, the iron horse had virtually disappeared. Companies also greatly increased the size of their freight equipment and added new types of rolling stock, such as the “Big John” hopper cars for grain haulage that appeared in the 1960s and specially designed flatcars for shipping containers first introduced in the 1980s. In the course of these transformations, state and federal regulatory changes and replacement technologies have spelled doom for the once ubiquitous caboose.

In the 1980s legal requirements for having a “full” freight crew of five to six employees changed rapidly. Railroads began to negotiate successfully with their operating brotherhoods for work rules that allowed them to dispatch three and then two crew members, all of whom could comfortably ride in the locomotive. Equipment, too, became more dependable and did not demand the watchful eyes of “hind-end” crew members.

A viable alternative to the caboose also appeared. This was the end-of-train device (EOT or EOTD). Placed on the rear coupler, it monitored air pressure in the brake system and reported any problems by radio signal to the locomotive cab. This portable electronic telemetry device also provided information about the slack between cars, and its blinking red light warned a following train that another one was is in front. Admittedly, this EOT’s light is somewhat less distinctive than the historic red and green caboose marker lights that evolved from kerosene to electric.

The last cabooses would be built in the 1980s; the premier manufacturer, International Car Company, ended its production in 1981. Soon railroads began to scrap, sell to rail enthusiasts, or donate to museums and communities these mostly obsolete pieces of equipment. Some carriers, however, continued to use cabooses, assigning them usually to switching or work-train chores.

The demise of the caboose no longer allows train watchers the opportunity to anticipate the last car of a passing freight train. Children (and adults, too) once took joy in waving to crew members, and these usually friendly trainmen returned the gesture. There might be a trackside shout or two of “hello” or “goodbye.” Still, cabooses can be seen in both public and private places and ridden on at some operating railroad museums.

In the 1930s, an Iowa farm wife may have explained why the now-retired cars aren’t completely obsolete:

“Whenever I see the caboose at the end of a freight train, I think what a cozy nook it is for railroaders. When I see smoke coming out of the little stove stack in cold weather, I like to imagine what it’s like inside for these men who are traveling down the track. I always wish I could be with them.”

And the caboose’s iconic status endures in popular culture. Certainly “The Little Red Caboose Behind the Train” is still sung and enjoyed by present-day school children. Yet the reference to the caboose probably needs to be clarified by the teacher just as the one-room school must be explained.

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