商品簡介
This book is about the most interesting key ever made, which now hangs in the central passageway of George Washington's Mount Vernon mansion, helping to greet over a million visitors a year. The main key to the Bastille prison in Paris, it was given in 1790 to Washington, the patriarch of liberty, by his missionary, the Marquis de Lafayette, who took the “sacred fire of liberty" he discovered in America and tried to fan its flames in France. Become a history detective and find out how this unique key was made, how the man who made it helped kill a king, and how it made its way to Mount Vernon. Along the way, learn about the interesting and unexpected twists and turns made in unlocking the doors hiding the truth about the key, which some (incorrectly) argue is a counterfeit. Then learn what Washington and Lafayette each believed was the “key” to establishing and maintaining liberty, and what went right and wrong in their respective revolutions. Finally, learn how the key continues to inspire a world-wide devotion to freedom. So, should we care that the Mount Vernon Bastille key is, in Lafayette's words, “the main key to the Bastille…the fortress of despotism”? Yes, we should care, because some, not the least of which was the French Count Chateaubriand, who witnessed the storming of the Bastille and later saw George Washington's key in Philadelphia, thought it was a fraud. Called the “greatest man in the world” by British King George III, was Washington with his genius of character the victim of a hoax? Should he have believed Lafayette, his “adopted son” and most fervent fan, that this was not only a Bastille key but its main key? How do we know how this “main key,” if that's what it was, survived the chaos and pandemonium of the revolutionary attack on the Bastille in 1789 Paris to make its way into Lafayette's hands and thence, over a tortuous trip of 4,000 miles in 1790, to Washington in New York City? And why might Lafayette not have substituted a larger, more impressive-looking key such as the one he gave years later to Washington's Masonic Lodge [National Memorial] in Alexandria, Virginia? If it's not the real "main key," have “We the People,” the tens of millions of visitors to Mount Vernon over the years, been fooled? And has George Washington, our preeminent Founding Father, who above all aspired to be an honest man, been an unwitting participant in such fraud? “Forbid it, Almighty God!”? In this book, follow FerrousTM to learn what the best history work can tell about the truth behind what Mount Vernon tour-guides have called “George Washington's Liberty Key”! Author Bill Bahr introduces and brings to life FerrousTM the key and his improbable journey from the iron foundries of 18th century France to a Bastille prison gate and finally to the entrance hall of George Washington's home, Mount Vernon. FerrousTM once represented tyranny and oppression – synonymous with the fate of a prisoner condemned without trial or hope. Now FerrousTM stands for the idea of liberty, so cherished by George Washington -- in his own words -- "a token of victory gained by Liberty over Despotism." What a transformation! While helping Lafayette get FerrousTM from France to George Washington in America, Thomas Paine said, “That the principles of America opened the Bastille is not to be doubted; and therefore the key comes to the right place.” For more information about FerrousTM and how George Washington's key ideas have opened the door to liberty, you have come to the right place -- this book!
