author
Auguste Levasseur
1795–1878
Best known for chronicling the Marquis de Lafayette’s celebrated tour of the United States in 1824–1825, this French writer and diplomat left behind a vivid firsthand account of a historic journey. His work still appeals to readers interested in early U.S. history, transatlantic politics, and travel writing.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in 1795, Auguste Levasseur was a French writer, diplomat, and public figure whose name is most closely tied to the Marquis de Lafayette. He accompanied Lafayette as his secretary during the general’s famous visit to the United States in 1824–1825, a tour that drew enormous public attention and celebrated Lafayette’s role in the American Revolution.
Levasseur later turned that experience into his best-known book, Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825, a journal-style account of the voyage and the reception Lafayette received across the young republic. The book is valued both as travel writing and as a window into American civic life, memory, and politics in the early nineteenth century.
He also had a diplomatic career, and sources describe his later involvement in French affairs in the Caribbean and Mexico. Auguste Levasseur died in 1878, but his writing remains a useful and engaging firsthand record of one of the most symbolic visits in the history of Franco-American friendship.