From July to September , the French Marquis de Lafayette , the last surviving major general of the American Revolutionary War , made a tour of the 24 states in the United States. He was received by the populace with a hero's welcome at many stops, and many honors and monuments were presented to commemorate and memorialize the visit. Lafayette led troops under the command of George Washington in the American Revolution over 40 years earlier, and he fought in several crucial battles, including the Battle of Brandywine in Pennsylvania and the Siege of Yorktown in Virginia.
He had then returned to France and pursued a political career championing the ideals of liberty that the American republic represented. He also advocated the end of slavery, in keeping with the philosophy of natural rights. After the storming of the Bastille in July , he was appointed commander-in-chief of France's National Guard and tried to steer a middle course through the years of the French Revolution. In August , radical factions of the revolution took control of the government and ordered Lafayette's arrest, so he fled to the Austrian Netherlands.
He was captured by Austrian troops and spent more than five years in prison. Lafayette returned to France after Napoleon Bonaparte secured his release in , though he refused to participate in Napoleon's government or his military conquests.
After the Bourbon Restoration of , he became a liberal member of the Chamber of Deputies , a position which he held for most of the remainder of his life. The Bourbon constitutional monarchy had been restored in France for at least ten years, but King Louis XVIII was reliant on a wheelchair in the spring of and suffering from severe health issues that proved fatal by late summer.
Lafayette visited all of the American states and traveled more than 6, miles 9, km , [ 6 ] [ 7 ] accompanied by his son Georges Washington de La Fayette , named after George Washington, and others. Different cities celebrated in different ways. Some held parades or conducted an artillery salute.
