Lafayette: The Making of an American Icon

In 1824 and 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette made a triumphal return to the United States, greeted by adoring Americans offering parades, speeches, and celebratory toasts. Fifty years after the American Revolution, a new generation of Americans was reckoning with the realities of sustaining a republic and constructing memories of the events that built the new nation.
On October 1, 2024, the American Philosophical Society welcomes Laura Auricchio, author of The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered, to mark the 200th anniversary of Lafayette’s 1824 visit to Philadelphia and the American Philosophical Society with a discussion of his life and legacy. Dr. Auricchio will be in conversation with Michelle McDonald, Director of the APS’s Library & Museum and they will discuss the Marquis’s reputation in the United States and in France, the ways that narratives of the Revolution were forming during this period in the Early Republic, and the Lafayette-mania that gripped the country in the wake of his return.