The American nation was advancing from infancy to headstrong youth. Its father might finally take his leave. Its people would have to choose another to lead them.
George Washington reached the end of his farewell message’s first paragraph and read these words softly to himself: “I should now apprise you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made.”
That was it: farewell, retirement, peace, and rest. It was time for the country to select a new president.
His message might have ended there, but difficult questions confronted the nation, threatening to sunder its newfound unity: issues of sectionalism and of partisanship and of a dangerous world beyond our shores. Issues that dealt with the very underpinnings of the freedoms they had all fought so hard for.
He might have now walked away from it all and allowed a fractious nation to stew in its own juices, or handed over all the issues to a new leader to figure out—but that would be abandoning duty. So, though
he was leaving, Washington could not remain silent. He had so much to say and as he thought how to relay them all in the proper spirit, the memories of what had brought him to this place in life began to flood his mind.
February 3, 1776
Continental Army Encampment
Cambridge, Massachusetts
There was a chill in the air, but it had nothing to do with the weather.
The new Continental Army was assembling at Cambridge, across the Charles River from British-occupied Boston. In truth, it was hardly an army, and it was hardly continental—being composed largely of flinty New England yeoman farmers and tradesmen and merchants and fishermen.
At the same time, some Virginian riflemen had tramped their way north, and their fringed white linen uniforms had quickly caught the attention of their Yankee allies—particularly the stout seamen of the Marblehead, Massachusetts, militia. Yes, it was a bit chilly here in Massachusetts—and it was a feeling that seemed to be shared by both sides.
As the two sides met, one stinging word led to another. Snowballs soon began to sail across Harvard Yard, and that soon escalated into methods that the southerners were far more experienced with: exchanging kicks and punches, gouging eyes, and biting. A thousand Americans bloodied one another in as wild a brawl as the continent had ever seen.
As the fight worsened, a white man and a black man appeared on horseback. The white man bounded off his mount, tossed its reins to his companion, and rushed into the very heart of the melee. He roughly grabbed the two largest combatants he could find, one in each hand, pulling them apart from each other, and solemnly talking sense to them. A thousand other amazed soldiers quickly grasped the identity of the blue-cloaked giant who had waded into their midst and quickly dispersed.
In the wake of George Washington’s abrupt arrival, the two warring factions settled down; the fighting was over. Washington, who watched the aftermath from atop his horse on a nearby hill, did not take any great
satisfaction in what had happened. All he could think about was what still lay ahead. It will be difficult, he thought, to forge one army—let alone a single nation—out of these men.
But he had no other choice.
April 29, 1796
Reviewing the Farewell Address
Executive Mansion
Philadelphia
Washington plodded on, continuing to scan his address. There were so many issues to confront; so many things he had to say. The night would be a long one.
Even though the war was over, the Constitutional Convention in 1787 illustrated just how much animosity remained between the different regions. Large states and small states battled over the system of representation. Northerners and southerners suspected each other. Rough-hewn pioneers on the frontier grew leery of the merchants and traders of the seaboard. Northern states were already working to abolish slavery. Farming states resented the new federal tariff.
Tonight, Washington took note of those divisions. He cautioned against “local discriminations” and reminded Americans that “with slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles … common dangers, sufferings, and successes.”
George Washington had relied on his gut his whole life. He judged people well and he saw events coming over the horizon when few others could. And now, once again, he saw ahead—perhaps beyond Yorktown to Fort Sumter, beyond Valley Forge to Gettysburg—and it sent an ominous chill down his spine.
January 12, 1777
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania
George Washington was angry.
“Why is your cart empty, soldier?” he demanded as he saw an empty wooden oxcart rumbling back into his army’s encampment. He had
ordered his men out into the Pennsylvania countryside to secure food and blankets for his starving troops. Now he saw that this cart and the ones behind it were all returning as forlorn as when they’d departed.
A sergeant, a veteran of the Delaware militia, stammered nervously at his commander. He had never addressed George Washington, nor any general, before—and he was not enjoying the experience.
“No one would sell to us, General! They won’t accept our Continental dollars!”
Washington waved his hand to dismiss the man. No, it wasn’t his fault, Washington had to admit. It was the fault of a currency that had no real value—and of a debt-ridden government that asked its people to place its trust in worthless IOUs instead of hard currency.
April 29, 1796
Reviewing the Farewell Address
Executive Mansion
Philadelphia
Washington fiddled with the small, shiny silver piece that lay upon his desk. It was a half dime, minted not far from the Executive Mansion. Some said that it was Martha’s likeness that graced this, the first of all American coins. Washington laughed as he thought of this. No, it was no more Martha on the front than that plucked chicken on its reverse was an American eagle.
The modest half dime—it was only worth five cents—was a small beginning for American finance, but it was a start. A nation had to exist on a firm financial footing. As a farmer, Washington knew the difference between profit and loss, the benefits of prudence and frugality and the cost of borrowed capital. As a commander of an army, he sorely knew that a civil government must stand on sound financial footing to equip its forces. As a citizen, he knew the damage a worthless, inflated currency—money not “worth a continental”—could inflict.
Tyranny, he thought to himself, is a hard master. Arithmetic is a harder one, and the tyranny of debt is the heaviest of them all.
Now, how to convey that sentiment to the people?
After a few minutes of thought, Washington took up his quill pen and
began to write. “Cherish public credit …,” he warned, “use it as sparingly as possible … by cultivating peace … not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should cooperate.”
Yes, Washington was warning any future presidents or congressman or senator, but he also was warning the people themselves.
In the end, he knew that the survival of freedom would depend primarily on them.
January 8, 1791
Executive Mansion
Philadelphia
Thomas Jefferson shot up out of his seat and slammed his fist on the table. His flushed complexion nearly matched his red hair.
“You have no right to do this! None whatsoever!” Washington’s secretary of state screamed, his anger directed toward the nation’s first secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton.
“How many times are we going to go through this, Mr. Jefferson?” Hamilton responded rather matter-of-factly. While the issue they were debating, Hamilton’s plan for a national bank, was a serious one, it’s always easier to maintain one’s calm when one holds the winning hand.
And Hamilton’s winning hand was having the support of George Washington.
Jefferson knew this, of course, but it didn’t quell his rage. “You are trampling on states’ rights! You are ripping up the Constitution itself! You don’t even know what the Constitution is! Ask Madison! He’ll tell you why you have no right to do this! None! You’re creating an autocracy! A monarchy!”
Washington looked anxious. It was his habit to allow his subordinates to argue their positions freely, but this debate—actually,
all
the debates—between Jefferson and Hamilton were becoming far too personal. Jefferson’s last remark was too much for Hamilton. He bolted from his seat, rushing at Jefferson. They would have been nose-to-nose, save for the fact that Jefferson’s nose was a good six inches higher than Hamilton’s.
“I don’t know the Constitution?” Hamilton sputtered. “How many of these vexations must I endure from you? Need I remind you, Mr. Jefferson, that I cowrote
The Federalist
, while you were gallivanting around France?” Hamilton was only warming up. “And where were you at Valley Forge? Oh, I almost forgot—you were governor of Virginia—and you were so popular in Williamsburg you couldn’t even get reelected!”
“Gentlemen, enough!” Washington finally exclaimed, placing his powerful frame between his most marvelously talented, and yet most antagonistic, cabinet members. “Is this what we spared so much blood and treasure for? Personal attacks on other patriots? Are we not all Americans?”
April 29, 1796
Reviewing the Farewell Address
Executive Mansion
Philadelphia
Washington gently ran his fingers up the parchment until he found the first words in the document. “Friends and Fellow-Citizens,” they read, though it seemed to him that he had far fewer friends now than he did when those words were first drafted for him.
His mind returned, as it so often did, to the rules of civility he had copied so neatly a half century earlier.
Rule 69: If two contend together take not the part of either unconstrained, and be not obstinate in your own opinion…
.
Obstinate opinion now threatened to wreck the new nation. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, both great patriots, could unfortunately no longer be counted among his friends. Their enthusiasm over a revolution in France blinded them to its excesses. Jefferson clashed at seemingly every turn with Hamilton. Disagreements turned into animosities and animosities hardened into political parties. Jefferson and Madison’s Democratic-Republicans declared war on Hamilton’s Federalists—and vice versa.
It was just a short step for criticism of policy to degenerate into personal slander. Washington knew that firsthand as his Democratic-Republican critics falsely accused him of padding his pockets from the national treasury. Some even dredged up old British forgeries that painted him as a royalist traitor.
These ridiculous charges, Washington had painfully noted, could be “applied to a Nero; a notorious defaulter, or even a common pickpocket.” For a man so painfully conscious of his reputation, these were wounds more painful to bear than a Valley Forge or Monmouth winter.
He examined a passage in the draft of the address that lay before him. Ambitious men, it noted, “serve to organize faction; to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; … to make the public administration the mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than … of consistent and wholesome plans….”
Washington dipped his quill pen and prepared to make an addition for the next draft. “Cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men,” he wrote, “will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
Party and partisanship, Washington recognized, must never come before principles and patriotism if America were to ever have a chance to fulfill its potential.
May 17, 1793
Executive Mansion
Philadelphia
It was a madhouse outside.
Men, women, and children thronged the city streets on all sides. Whistling, cheering, and even singing, they could not contain themselves. Men enthusiastically flung their three-cornered hats in the air. Women shrieked in joy. Children ran back and forth across the street maniacally. A cannon boomed in the distance. It was as if this were Christmas, the Fourth of July, and Inauguration Day all rolled into one.
But the excitement was not for Washington, who waited inside the mansion—nor for Jefferson or Hamilton.
It was for Edmond Genêt.
Citizen Edmond-Charles Genêt was the newly arrived ambassador of the new French Republic—and Americans were going absolutely wild for both France and Genêt.
Unfortunately, the men and women on the street that day had little idea what they were really celebrating.
The French Revolution had promised a glorious spring of human freedom, but it had degenerated into a series of long, hot summers of sheer blood-spattered terror. France guillotined its king, declared war on Britain—and demanded that America take its side.
Washington had issued a Proclamation of Neutrality to keep the peace, but Genêt was already working amazing mischief by organizing clubs of Americans to work against George Washington and for a foreign power. The Frenchman had even authorized privateers, operating out of American ports, to seize British ships.
Washington grimly surveyed the crowd—or was it a mob?—outside his window. In the distance he watched Genêt’s carriage approaching. Just outside he saw Americans wearing red, white, and blue, but not out of any sense of American pride. No, it was in support of the French Revolution’s new national flag.
“I cannot believe it,” Washington mourned. “Do these good people really want to abandon allegiance to our Stars and Stripes so soon?”
April 29, 1796
Reviewing the Farewell Address