A Hero Returns to a Young Country in Turmoil

The year is 1824. America is caught between peril and progress. The 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches. The original 13 colonies have turned into twenty-four states, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River.  Great cities have developed, and an expanding population now spreads halfway across the continent.

The memory of the founding, though, is fading; the generation who participated in it is vanishing too. The great stages of the Revolution, such as Independence Hall in Philadelphia, are left vulnerable and decaying. Americans are less preoccupied with past battles fought together than new battles, fought amongst themselves. 

Now a bitter presidential election is underway, a battle between establishment and populism. New antagonisms, based on class and region, bloomed, pitting east against west, merchants against farmers. The rancorous contest dominates conversation and causes intense bitterness. The enmity produces talk of disunion. One candidate’s supporters even threaten to storm the U.S. Capitol should their man lose.

And then comes an unexpected turn: On August 15th, the merchant ship Cadmus arrives in New York City. Onboard is Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, the French nobleman who had pledged his life and fortune to America’s cause in 1777 and is now one of the last surviving generals of its Continental Army.

Lafayette’s tour is filled with cameos by remarkable figures seen from unexpected angles. These include Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, in the twilight of their lives, reflecting on the past and future of the country they founded; Andrew Jackson, prior to his ascent to the presidency and the age it defined, and Samuel Morse, a frustrated painter before the discovery of telegraphy and the code that bears his name.

The story forms a panorama of the nation as it nears its fiftieth birthday, a complex landscape in a young country of idealistic reformers and increasingly isolated Indian nations, aged founding fathers and a new generation of swaggering populist politicians practicing a rowdy form of electioneering that empowers the people but threatens to unleash their worst instincts. A land of plenty but also inequality under law, where incredible national promise was clouded by the unresolvable evil of slavery.

The Last Adieu is not simply a travelogue, following Lafayette from one state to the next, but a collection of closely related stories, all connected by the old hero, about politics and progress. 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.