ABSTRACT
A new political entity had come into place, utterly distinct from anything Europe had known, and Americans realized how much they owed to the heroic generation that had created their still young country. The cult of the great man had impressed itself no less upon American than upon European civilization. When Andrew Jackson defeated the British, spectacularly if belatedly, at the Battle of New Orleans early in January 1815, he became overnight America's most popular military man. Liberal France recognized the marquis de Lafayette's prominent role in its Revolution; in 1824 Americans hailed him as the only surviving general of its War of Independence, an honoured associate of Washington and other early leaders of the American republic. As leader of the Paris National Guard, he promoted the republican principles he had imbibed in the American War for Independence, but as the Jacobins increased in power he lost favour and fortune.
