#132 In the Footsteps of Lafayette w/ Julien Icher
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 10 June 2019
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On August 15, 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette arrived in the United States to say farewell to the country whose independence he helped secure more than four decades earlier. Over the next 15 months, Lafayette visited all 24 states, meeting with old friends and attending celebrations hosted by Americans who flocked to see the last-living Major General of the Revolutionary War whose close friendship with George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson Jefferson shaped both the American and French Revolutions.
Since 2017, Julien Icher has been working to document the 5,000 mile journey that Lafayette took during his farewell visit. Icher, himself a Frenchman, has a remarkable skill set that combines the best of primary source-based research with the technical knowledge required for digital mapping. The result is The Lafayette Trail- a publicly accessible map that allows users to see Lafayette's physical route, as well as the people, places and events he encountered along the way.
In this episode, Ben speaks with Julien Icher about Lafayette's contribution to American Independence, his life after returning to France, and the farewell tour that inspired Julien to create The Lafayette Trail. We also speak about the history of Franco-American friendship and why both countries are better when we work together.
Julien Icher is the Founder and Executive Director of The Lafayette Trail, which he established in March 2017 at the Consulate General of France in Boston. Julien is in the process of raising funds for phase two of the Lafayette trail, which is a roadside historical marker program to commemorate the legacy of Lafayette's visit to dozens of communities across the United States. If you would like to contribute to, or learn more about this project, visit his GoFundMe page by clicking here.
The Road to Now is a proud member of the Osiris Podcast Network.
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Southern Songs and Stories is a documentary series on the artists, music, and culture of the South with interviews, songs, a good bit of history, and insights into how all of it fits together. |
| 0:17.6 | I'm your host, Joe Kendrick, inviting you to come explore the music of the South |
| 0:21.6 | and the artists who make it on Southern Songs and Stories. |
| 0:32.7 | I'm Bob Crawford. I'm Ben Sawyer. And this is The Road to Now. |
| 0:38.5 | And today's episode is sincerely a story about a person following a road, following the path of someone who came before them. |
| 0:50.4 | The person we interviewed is Julian Isha. |
| 0:54.3 | He is a young French scholar, kind of a phenom, who is a just a polyglot can do like really so many different things all at once. |
| 1:05.0 | And his mission right now, which he's been pursuing for the last few years, is he is tracking the path that the Marquis de Lafayette |
| 1:12.9 | took when he returned to the United States in 1824 and 1825. Lafayette went through every state at the time, |
| 1:21.9 | and Julian has followed those footsteps. He is mapping the entire thing, GPS, so he's programming as well, |
| 1:31.4 | the Lafayette Trail. You can go check it out, and I highly suggest you do. I never knew this, Bob. |
| 1:38.0 | I knew that Lafayette had gone to the Hermitage to visit Jackson. It's a very interesting time, |
| 1:43.1 | right? Because he comes in 1824. That's the year of the |
| 1:45.4 | election between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. So after that election, he goes and he meets at |
| 1:51.6 | Andrew Jackson's house. And I've heard different stories about how long he stayed there. Julian was able to |
| 1:56.2 | confirm. He went there. He did not stay the night. But I was able to see the path he went. He came down the Cumberland. Wow. And I've taken the boat down the Cumberland a couple of times. We have a boat that was my father-in-law, that will be my sons one day. But I've taken it down the Cumberland. And just knowing that I had followed the path that Lafayette took, made something I had already done way cooler. |
| 2:19.5 | If you're living on the East Coast, go check out the Lafayette Trail and see, there might be a |
| 2:24.8 | place near you where Lafayette stopped. You'll be connected to one of the great founders of the country. |
| 2:29.0 | Does this go some way in explaining why there's so many different Lafayette's in the United States? |
| 2:36.7 | Yes, it does. |
| 2:37.8 | Because Lafayette was the last living major general from the American Revolution. |
| 2:43.4 | For those of you guys don't know his story, we explained it a bit in the podcast, but he was a young Frenchman. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Benjamin Sawyer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Benjamin Sawyer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.