Farewell, George Washington

Fittingly, the Father of our Country was also the Father of the Presidential Farewell Address. Having served two terms as America’s first Chief Executive, Washington voluntarily relinquished the office – and the power that went with it – setting a precedent followed by every president since… with the lone exception of Franklin Roosevelt, who apparently felt that the country couldn’t do without his peerless leadership.

Washington did not write his own farewell address, nor did he deliver it. Instead, he asked Alexander Hamilton to take pen in hand and presented him with two options. First, he could revise the farewell address that James Madison had written for Washington in 1792 when he considered stepping down after a single term. Obviously, that address was never used because Washington was talked into running for a second term amid growing tensions with both England and France.

Hamilton’s second option was to start from scratch, which was much more to his liking. However, Hamilton did incorporate a few of Madison’s opening paragraphs in his draft and Washington reserved for himself the right to make some final edits, including punctuation marks. The polished-to-perfection version was then published in the American Daily Advertiser in Philadelphia on September 19, 1796, and subsequently in other newspapers throughout the country.

There were three key subjects that Washington addressed in his farewell to the nation, the first of which was the importance of patriotism and the danger of regionalism. Having fought and won the War of Independence, the last thing Washington wanted to see was the newly formed United States reverting to being 13 colonies acting independently of each other. Being a Federalist at heart, he reminded his readers that the success and the survival of the world’s first constitutional republic hinged on their commonalities, not their differences.

Fast forward to today and the Union that Abraham Lincoln tried so hard to preserve is on the brink of dissolution. There is a reason why some people in Florida and Texas are in favor of succeeding… and why residents in eastern Oregon and Washington State are lobbying to become part of Idaho. Simply put, the time-honored values that red states hold dear are being mocked, undermined, and even countermanded by blue states, and there doesn’t seem to be an end (or a truce) in sight.

Washington also warned against partisanship, which he saw as a threat to national unity. How prescient was that? At a time when there were only two fledgling parties – the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans – Washington longed for citizens to self-identify first and foremost as Americans, especially since two of his own cabinet members were at odds over the matter. (Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton was pro-England and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson was pro-France.)

E pluribus unum – out of many, one – was made part of our Great Seal in 1782 and first used on coinage in 1786. So, by the time Washington took office in 1789, the “America first” concept that Donald Trump has since championed was well established.

Washington’s third major concern was what he called “foreign entanglements.” Whereas he saw the need for treaties in “extraordinary emergencies,” Washington was not a proponent of “permanent alliances.” He believed that “The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.”

I wonder what ol’ George would think about NATO… or for that matter, the United Nations. I’m guessing he may have tolerated the former but wouldn’t have been a fan of either.

Tomorrow, we will look at another presidential farewell address, this one personally delivered by Dwight Eisenhower as he prepared to vacate the Oval Office.