The Last Adieu: Lafayettes Triumphant Return, the Echoes of Revolution, and the [Hardcover]

'History writing at its absolute best. Deep and diligent work in all the relevant archives, accompanied by a fine written style, allows Ryan L. Cole to transport us back to the young American republic of 1824. The ecstatic way that Americans welcomed their revolutionary hero the Marquis de Lafayette, nearly half a century after his first arrival to their shores, tells us a great deal about him, them, and their ambition to live up to their country's founding ideals.''Ryan L. Cole's The Last Adieu offers a poignantly inspiring chronicle of Lafayette's farewell tour of the United States, a time when the country remembered old friends and heroes; took stock of fifty years of progress; and looked forward to an uncertain future.''Ryan L. Cole's book is a beautiful fresco of the months during which Lafayette traveled the vast expanse of the United States despite his age. Forty years after his last trip, Lafayette observes the changes that have taken place in the young nation. Drawing on archive sources and accounts, Cole brings to life a journey that resonated not only in America but also in France, reviving the memory of the American War of Independence and one of its heroes on both sides of the Atlantic.'A Hero Returns to a Young Country in Turmoil. A story about the promise in the Declaration of Independence, about revolution, in America and elsewhere, about journeys up and down great rivers, and through wilds. It is a story of memory and union. Above all else it is a story of the American people.

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“Memories of the Revolution have come back to life…”

In the summer of 1824, the aging Marquis de Lafayette, defeated politically and distraught over the fate of liberty in Europe, set sail one last time from France for America after an absence of forty years.

Across the sea waited a nation transformed: Thirteen colonies werel³™