57 pages • 1 hour read
George WashingtonGeorge Washington's Farewell Address
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1796A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Importance of National Unity
The maintenance of national unity is the principal concern of Washington’s “Farewell Address,” and his heavy emphasis on it shows it to be a source of profound concern for the departing president. Washington repeatedly insists that if Americans fail to start thinking and acting as one people, the entire country will collapse. He hints toward the existence of conspirators actively seeking to foment disunion, either to weaken the country or to take over its government. To defend against this predatory scheme, Americans must recognize national unity as a “primary object of patriotic desire” (Paragraph 13) and regard any attempt to undermine national unity as a direct threat to their own safety and livelihoods.
By the time Washington published the “Farewell Address,” practically no one would have disputed that national unity was preferable to division. The more controversial point was Washington’s insistence that only the Federal Constitution, ratified nearly a decade before, was the only way to ensure national unity. There were several reasons to view the new government with some skepticism, even for dedicated patriots no less committed to national unity than Washington. The Constitution transferred the bulk of political power from the states to the federal government, which was then headquartered in New York City (and planning its move to the new city of Washington in the federal District of Columbia). Before the advent of modern communication and transportation, most people lived locally and had few ways of learning about or connecting with distant regions. Nothing like representative democracy had ever been tried with a country as large as the United States, and it was widely believed that representatives had to be close to their constituents to work on their behalf. A distant capital, concentrating all the centers of power in one place, was a potential locus of corruption.
With Washington’s presidency at an end, his time in office had become the sole test case for whether the federal government created under the Constitution was helpful or harmful to The Preservation of Liberty. Washington, therefore, sees a defense of his record as a defense of the Constitution itself. Since he views the Constitution as necessary for national unity, the “Farewell Address” conflates, albeit subtly, the good of the nation with Washington’s policies, strongly hinting that those who oppose him are unpatriotic. In such a large and diverse country, where some manner of difference is inevitable, the demand for complete national unity can be quite divisive.
Virtue as a Safeguard Against Social Decay
Washington’s claim that “virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government” is a well-established maxim of classical republicanism (Paragraph 27), a centuries-old school of thought that focuses on preventing governments from sliding into tyranny. Many of the Founders, including Washington, worried that a republic (today more commonly called a representative democracy) was potentially unstable. Because the people were free, there was no guarantee that they would exercise that freedom in ways harmonious with the public good. If everyone were to simply look out for themselves, public order would gradually break down, and the people might willingly trade their freedom for security. For example, only a few years after the “Farewell Address,” the French Revolution had become so chaotic that Napoleon was made a military dictator to impose order.
A virtuous, public-spirited citizenry was viewed as a main safeguard against social decay. A moral people would presumably be more willing to put the needs of others before themselves, obey the law, and hold their fellow citizens accountable when they fell short. In the classical republican view, the best way to cultivate a virtuous society was education, and Washington explicitly calls to “promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge” (Paragraph 27). He believes that because it is common sense that people carry with them the lessons learned at a young age, educating them to be good citizens from childhood is among the surest way to achieve a law-abiding and productive society. The main question is whether education should focus on sentiment or calculation. In other words, people should either have an instinctual love of country that makes it unconscionable to break the laws, or else learn that to do so would harm them in the long term.
Washington appeals to both sentiment and calculation, arguing that the country “has a right to concentrate on [their] affections” (Paragraph 9) and that people should be conditioned to feel outraged at any attack on national unity. Similarly, he sees religion as among the “firmest props to the duties of men and citizens” because someone accepts religious truth as a matter of faith and should likewise view the importance of national unity as a sacred truth that need not be seen to be believed (Paragraph 26). Someone who is loyal simply out of self-interest may later change their mind. On the other hand, education is also supposed to refine a person’s rational capacities, allowing them to understand their self-interest in a more complex, calculated way than mere instinct allows. It is a dilemma Washington never quite resolves, and so he simply appeals to both sentiment and calculation in equal measure.
The Preservation of Liberty
Liberty, or freedom, is one of the most cherished concepts in American society, in part because Americans understand themselves as being the first modern nation to place liberty at the center of its politics. However, while the “Farewell Address” frames liberty as the ultimate good that national unity promises to secure, the modern reader might not find Washington’s advice to be especially compatible with liberty. Contemporary American culture tends to define liberty as the unfettered ability to do as one pleases, yet Washington’s “Farewell Address” demands total compliance with laws, frequently equates dissent with treason, and even warns against “the spirit of innovation” (Paragraph 18), which many now consider one of America’s greatest features.
Part of this discrepancy is likely due to how, in late-18th-century America, freedom was conceptualized differently. Millions of Black Americans were enslaved, Indigenous peoples were regarded as foreigners governable under the laws of war, and the right to vote was limited to white, property-owning men. Aside from these important differences, Washington’s concept of liberty draws mainly from ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the Renaissance thinkers who helped revive Classical traditions in Europe. In those traditions, liberty was less a right than a privilege granted to those who held full citizenship. The ability to vote and serve in the legislature was a perk, but it also involved a responsibility to the public welfare. Those who made the laws were entrusted with ensuring the laws were duly observed; if lawmakers used their power simply to benefit themselves, the whole system would fall apart.
Addressing his “Friends and Fellow Citizens,” Washington defines liberty as obedience to the law, in the understanding that a law-abiding society offers a combined security and prosperity that is a far more authentic form of freedom than simply pursuing one’s desires. Although a strong federal government might seem like a serious threat to liberty, especially for a people who have just thrown off the rule of a king, Washington argues that such a government is the “surest guardian” of liberty since it has the power to enforce the laws and thereby protect citizens from one another. If the American people can practice moderate freedom within the bounds of the law, the nation itself will ultimately earn the freedom to act as it pleases on the world stage, although here as well it should be constrained by a reasonable sense of “our interest, guided by justice” (Paragraph 36).
