Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette served as a major-general under George Washington.
Lafayette made a name for himself when Washington sent him to fight the Battle of Brandywine. To everyone's amazement, he kept fighting after he took a bullet in the leg. When he went for medical attention afterwards, George Washington said, "Treat him as if he were my son."
President John Quincy Adams once said, "He devoted himself, his life, his fortune, his hereditary honors, his towering ambition, his splendid hopes, all to the cause of liberty."
Lafayette deserves more than being America's "forgotten hero". Let us honor our misremembered founding father properly. Let us commemorate his legacy with a monument equal to his sacrifices for liberty in our nation's capital.