George Washington: Farewell Address

Context

After serving as commander in chief for eight years during the American Revolution, Washington announced that he would retire from the army and not serve again in public office. In 1787 friends and advisers such as James Madison, Virginia governor Edmund Randolph, and Henry Knox (chief artillery officer of the Continental army and later the first U.S. secretary of war) persuaded him to come out of retirement to serve as a delegate to a general convention of the states to amend the Articles of Confederation. When the new Constitution was ratified, Washington was unanimously elected as the country's first president. He reluctantly accepted the position and hoped to serve no longer than one full term. In May 1792, near the end of his first term, Washington asked Madison to assist in drafting a farewell address. (Madison had written Washington's presidential inaugural address in April 1789.) Domestic turmoil and European war coupled with the unified advice of the cabinet persuaded Washington to accept a second term, to which he was unanimously reelected. With partisanship raging in 1796, however, he refused to seek a third term.

Early in 1796, Washington decided to write a farewell address to announce his retirement, to thank his countrymen for the opportunity to serve, and to admonish Americans to preserve their Union. Washington had prepared farewell addresses on six previous occasions: to his fellow militia officers (January 1759), to the state executives (June 1783), to the army (November 1783), to the army officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York City (December 1783), to Congress in surrendering his commission (December 1783), and at the end of his first term as president when he asked Madison to prepare a draft address to the American people (May 1792). In February 1796, a year before the end of Washington's second term, he asked Alexander Hamilton for assistance in reworking the draft of his Farewell Address. Washington sent Hamilton the 1792 draft by Madison, his own revised copy of that draft, and some general sentiments that he wanted to express in the address. Hamilton returned all the documents to Washington with his revisions.

Washington and Hamilton exchanged ideas and copies of the address once more before Washington received Hamilton's final version, which Washington revised only slightly. Washington submitted his final version of the address to his cabinet on September 15, 1796, and all members endorsed it. Four days later, Washington publicly announced his decision to retire, and his Farewell Address was printed in the Philadelphia American Daily Advertiser. Reprinted in newspapers and as broadsides and pamphlets throughout the country, the address was immediately perceived as part of the partisan politics of the day—Federalists extolled it while Jeffersonians criticized it, especially Washington's harsh statements about political parties. Four years later, with Thomas Jefferson's victory in the election of 1800 and the gradual demise of the Federalist Party, the advice in Washington's Farewell Address was embraced by the Jeffersonians and came to be universally admired and perceived as Washington's legacy to his country.