President Jay Dickey gave a lecture to the Washington State Society of the Sons of the American Revolution in celebration of the Marquis de Lafayette’s Tour of America in 1824-25. 2024 marks the 250th anniversary of the tour, which is being commemorated this year in multiple ways throughout the United States. Lafayette, the last living General of the Continental Army, visited all 24 states in America, traveling over 6,000 miles in a period of 13 months. The largest crowds in American history to that point turned out to greet him everywhere he went, culminating in his appearance in Boston in June 1825 to lay the cornerstone of the monument being erected to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775. Hundreds of thousands of people attended the event, and afterwards, Lafayette filled several trunks with dirt from Bunker Hill to take home to France. The story of his Tour of America is one of the most compelling in American history.
