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In 1824, Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette, hero of the American and French revolutions, was invited by Congress and President James Monroe to tour the United States after a 40-year absence. In a 14-month trip, he would celebrate two birthdays (his 67th and 68th), visit all 24 states, witness a four-man presidential election, and stay everywhere from Monticello, home of his old friend Thomas Jefferson, to a village of French squatters in Missouri.

His journey is something I explore in my new book, The Hero Returns: Lafayette and the Legacy of Revolution. And starting this week, anyone who contributes $250 or more to National Review’s webathon will receive a free copy, which will ship when it gets published on June 30.

How had Lafayette become America’s favorite Frenchman?

He was a nobleman who came in 1777 to fight for us — we were flattered, and impressed with his boundary-busting commitment. He was young — 19 when he first arrived. He was on his own — in 1777, France had not yet formally allied with American rebels, and in fact Lafayette was disobeying his king’s orders when he set off. He paid his own way — he never took a salary, and he bought the ship that brought him over. He began learning English on his voyage, which not every French officer who ultimately came here once the alliance was declared did. He followed orders and accepted criticism, which not every Frenchman who ultimately came here did. He loved George Washington, and was loved by him in turn.

And finally, after the revolution was over, he left, so the rancor of the early republic never touched him. He could stay friends with both Jefferson and his mutual enemy Alexander Hamilton.

Why did America want to see him again in 1824? To honor a gallant veteran. To recall a past that was disappearing (by then only three signers of the Declaration still lived, and only one major general from the Continental Army — Lafayette himself). To boast about what America had become: Thirteen states clinging to the Atlantic now included a 24th across the Mississippi. Steamboats plied every river more than two feet deep; the Erie Canal was almost completely dug.

Why had Lafayette come? To be praised, of course (Jefferson said he had “a canine appetite” for popularity). To see what his comrades and their descendants had wrought. But, most important, to show the world, especially France, a republic that worked. Lafayette’s second revolution had not worked. He began it with hopes, picking the tricolor scheme — blue and red from the arms of Paris, white from the royal flag — that France still uses and helping write the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. But after three years of deteriorating politics, he exiled himself and watched while his countrymen erected guillotines, then turned to Napoleon. Lafayette disdained both: His in-laws were beheaded, and he never served the emperor. The American Revolution, by contrast, had produced free citizens, regular elections, religious liberty, and a free (indeed boisterous) press.

Lafayette saw the problems. Americans held a million and a half slaves; he asked Jefferson and James Madison about it privately, and greeted black people, from old comrades to school children, throughout his trip. He stayed with the Creek Nation, which had just signed a treaty to move from western Georgia to Oklahoma.

Nevertheless, he thought America was a success and an example for the world. He called his trip a glorious demonstration of the superiority of republican institutions founded on the plain rights of man over degrading aristocracy and despotism.

Lafayette thought men had rights, that they were plain, and that republican institutions expressed and upheld them. At National Review, we aim to uphold and defend those same values. If you can, please give to our webathon — and, as mentioned above, give $250 or more and receive a free copy of my book about this remarkable Frenchman.

Everyone knows the story of the officer in the American Expeditionary Force who went to Lafayette’s grave in Paris in 1917 and said, “Lafayette, we are here.” Lafayette spent his life saying, I am here. Wherever liberty was contested, he did not need to be called. He would be there.