Settlement of western problems did not, however, put an end to partisan strife. Even the sainted Washington was neither immune to attack nor entirely above the battle. On questions of finance and foreign policy he usually sided with Hamilton and thus increasingly incurred the anger of the Jeffersonians. But he was, after all, a Virginian. Only the most rabid partisan could think him a tool of northern commercial interests. He remained as he intended himself to be, a symbol of national unity. But he was determined to put away the cares of office at the end of his second term. In September 1796 he announced his retirement in a Farewell Address to the nation.
Washington found the acrimonious rivalry between Federalists and Republicans most disturbing. Hamilton advocated national unity, yet he seemed pre-
George Washington becomes myth—part Moses, part angel— within a year of his death in 1801.
Source: ©2009 Peabody Essex Museum. Photograph by Mark Sexton.
The George Washington Bridge over the Hudson is among the innumerable places that honor the first president of the United States.
Pared to smash any individual or faction that disagreed with his vision of the country’s future. Jefferson had risked his neck for independence, but he opposed the economic development needed to make America strong enough to defend that independence. Washington was less brilliant than either Hamilton or Jefferson, but wiser. He appreciated how important it was that the new nation should remain at peace with the rest of the world and with itself. In his farewell he deplored the “baneful effects of the spirit of party” that led honest people to use unscrupulous means to win a mean advantage over fellow Americans. He tried to show how the North benefited from the prosperity of the South, the South from that of the North, and the East and West also in reciprocal fashion.
Washington urged the people to avoid both “inveterate antipathies” and “passionate attachments” to any foreign nation. Nothing had alarmed him more than the sight of Americans dividing into “French” and “English” factions. Furthermore, France had repeatedly interfered in American domestic affairs. “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence,” Washington now warned, “the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake.” America should develop its foreign trade but steer clear of foreign political connections as far as possible. “Permanent alliances” should be avoided, although “temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies” might sometimes be useful.
•••-[Read the Document George Washington, Farewell Address at myhistorylab. com
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