George Washington's Farewell Address

Washington’s “Farewell Address” has two distinct purposes. The first is to announce Washington’s retirement and share his parting thoughts on preserving America’s freedom. In this capacity, Washington speaks as a beloved national hero, finally ready to close the book on an extraordinary career of public service. The second is to defend the record of his presidential administration against its critics. This requires Washington to be a more partisan figure, the de facto leader of the Federalist Party trying to garner voter support in the upcoming election. Throughout the “Farewell Address,” Washington strikes a careful balance between these two objectives, representing himself as concerned only with the good of the nation while at the same time delving into the political arena to challenge his critics.

The tension is evident from the beginning of the address, as Washington explains his decision to decline candidacy for a third term. He proclaims that “the state of your concerns, external as well as internal, no longer renders the pursuit of inclination incompatible with the sentiment of duty or propriety” (Paragraph 3). On the surface, he is merely saying that circumstances are calm enough to permit his long-desired retirement, but he implicitly attributes that calm to his highly controversial decision to remain neutral rather than support France in its ongoing war with Britain. He can retire because he has succeeded.

As Washington offers his gratitude for the public’s support, this seemingly innocuous gesture barely conceals an attack on his political enemies: By staying faithful to him, Washington suggests, the people refused to succumb to “the passions, agitated in every direction, [that] were liable to mislead; amidst appearances sometimes dubious” (Paragraph 5). Here Washington plainly extols himself as the embodiment of reason and public interest, unlike those who would stir up public emotions through deceit.

As Washington prepares to offer his parting advice, he first insists upon the reliability of his message, on account of both his extensive experience and his professed disinterest in further political squabbles. As he explains The Importance of National Unity, his disinterestedness should compare favorably with the “batteries of internal and external enemies [who] will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed” to sow discord and weaken the nation (Paragraph 8). Yet Washington is also profoundly concerned that an appeal to the passions, however “wrongheaded,” will be more persuasive than an argument based on cold calculation, and so he makes a sentimental case on behalf of national unity. He claims unity “is now dear to you” and calls for the people to:

[C]herish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity […] discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned (Paragraph 8).

In short, the primacy of national unity should be considered a sacred truth, without question or toleration of dissent.

Yet as soon as Washington itemizes why Americans should view themselves as one indissoluble people, he pivots and appeals to the interests of his audience. Hamilton, the principal author of the “Farewell Address,” believed self-interest was humanity’s ultimate motivation and that sentiments would change as interests changed: The people might presently be attached to their city or state, but once the federal government could demonstrate provision for their security and prosperity, it would win their admiration and even their love.

To make the appeal to the audience’s interest, Washington must speak directly to the differences that he just dismissed as insignificant compared with their shared American character. As he breaks down the country into its main regions, he makes an argument reminiscent of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776), which argues that free markets increase the prosperity of the whole by tying together the profit motive of each particular industry. Even if Washington’s case is persuasive on purely economic grounds, it conspicuously avoids the issue of slavery, which would indeed divide the country 65 years after the publication of the “Farewell Address.” Washington fails to mention the issue not only because he himself is an enslaver but also likely because he considered the issue’s divisiveness irreconcilable. His omission is a sobering reminder that at this time, the United States’ national unity, as Washington conceptualized it, entailed acceptance of bondage for millions of Black Americans. (Likewise, the right to liberty would appear to extend only to white, property-owning men.)

Washington also runs up against a complication that, according to the Federalists, stems from an irresolvable facet of human nature: Self-interest, “the strongest passion of the human mind” (Paragraph 20), is what drives factionalism—yet liberty is what allows citizens to pursue that self-interest in the first place. Therefore, as Madison writes in Federalist 10 (1787), the only way to “remov[e] the causes of factions” is to either destroy liberty or supply everyone with “the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests” (Madison, James. Federalist 10. The Federalist. Ed. George W. Carey and James McClellan. Liberty Fund, 2001). The first option would be a cure “worse than the disease” (Madison), and the second is impossible. Liberty is both a necessity for and threat to self-government, and this paradox accounts for an inherent fragility of self-government. This very fragility compelled the Founders to study the rise and fall of other representative governments, especially since those entities have historically survived only briefly: Athenian democracy, in its purest form, survived less than 200 years, and Rome’s republican lifespan was less than 500. The American founders’ challenge was to craft a system that both preserved individual liberty and protected from the potentially fatal discord that such liberty makes possible. If liberty allows the pursuit of self-interest, a republic cannot wholly forestall factions—it can only guard against factionalist impact. Washington thus spends the rest of the “Farewell Address” looking for ways to mitigate factionalist impact in a manner consistent with republican liberty.

One potential safeguard is reverence for the laws. Since the Constitution and federal laws are “the offspring of our own choice” (Paragraph 15), they demand total obedience. Washington acknowledges that “an explicit and authentic act of the whole people” is sufficient to change the law (Paragraph 15), but it appears that without such total public support, any resistance or challenge to the laws is a factionalist threat to national security. Since Washington was the only president thus far, and his supporters had controlled the Senate for both of his terms, his policies were the only laws on the books. Washington all but suggests that those who would change the laws, namely Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans, represent a factional interest and are thus a danger to the country.

Other suggestions for controlling factions similarly insinuate Jeffersonian menace. The “Farewell Address” positions Virtue as a Safeguard Against Social Decay. By calling religion and morality the “indispensable supports” of political freedom, Washington takes aim at the secular Jefferson, who famously envisioned a “wall of separation between church and state” (“Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptists [1801].” Library of Congress, 1998). The French Revolution also raised the issue of religion after it stripped the Catholic Church of much of its political and financial power. Jefferson had embraced the deposition as necessary for social equality, but as the Revolution became more violent and radical, Federalists worried its anti-clericalism was symptomatic of moral corruption. While Washington does not call for an established church, his remarks in support of religion are another example of rhetoric that, though seemingly boilerplate, carries a sharp political message for the attentive listener.

Perhaps no part of the address is better known than its section on foreign relations, and here especially is evidence of Washington conveying a partisan argument through seemingly dispassionate rhetoric. He declares, “[T]he great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible” (Paragraph 34). This excuses Washington’s treaties with Britain and Spain, which were primarily commercial, while condemning any prospective effort by the Jeffersonians to build ties with France, which would presumably be “political” in nature. Also, in his famous warning against “permanent alliances,” he clarifies that existing arrangements “be observed in their genuine sense” (Paragraph 38). As with domestic laws, Washington here implies that everything done so far is acceptable, but anything more would be a mistake.

In retrospect, Washington appears to have succeeded in both of his objectives—to advise the country on national unity, and to defend his administration against criticism. The Federalists won the presidency and both houses of Congress in 1796, although their fortunes would decline following the death of Washington in 1799 and the election of Jefferson in 1800. As its surrounding political situation has faded away, the “Farewell Address” retains its reputation as the greatest statement on national unity from the person most responsible for that unity. This makes it all the more important to look at this speech with a critical eye and see that even the luminaries of the American founding were no less subject to the partisan rancor that characterizes contemporary US politics.