Washington's Warnings for Then and Now

I took this date in history as an occasion to read in its entirety George Washington's "Farewell Address," which was published in the Philadelphia Daily American Advertiser on September 19, 1787.

George Washington, 1795

Congress developed a tradition of reading it in one chamber or the other every session. I guess they ended that tradition when it pricked their collective conscience because they had begun almost immediately after Washington left office to violate every piece of advice it offered them.

Washington opened his address by announcing his decision not to run for a third term as president. That in itself set a precedent that was followed until FDR violated it in 1940. (He extended his breakage of the precedent by running for a fourth term in 1944.) Washington's announcement was perhaps the most profound decision of noncandidacy until Calvin Coolidge's terse announcement: "I do not choose to run for President in 1928."

After Washington's stunning announcement, he stated his central purpose for his address: "to offer to your solemn contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments ... which appear to me all important to the permanency of your felicity as a people." He presented these words of advice as "the disinterested warnings of a parting friend."

He then warned that "from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of" the truths he would declare.

He warned them of the necessity of taking great pride in being Americans, whether natural-born or naturalized citizens. They were Americans because "you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles." They had fought for a "commo0n cause," facing "common dangers, sufferings, and successes."

Washington and his patriot soldiers crossing the Delaware during the Revolution

He warned against factors that would undermine the interdependence of the different geographic and commercial sections of the nation. Their strength lay in maintaining "unrestrained intercourse" in commercial trade between all regions, the "protection of a maritime strength," and "progressive improvement of interior communications by land and water." In short, they must ensure that all regions of the country exhibited "an indissoluble community of interest as one nation."

He warned against getting entangled with foreign nations and alliances and playing favorites among the nations of the world. "Observe good faith and justice towards all nations, cultivate peace and harmony with all.... The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave."

The bulk of his warnings, however, dealt with the nation's attitude toward the Constitution, political partisanship, and the temptations of personal ambition and power.

The U.S. Constitution

At the very foundation for national success, even survival, lay the Constitution. "Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures" were absolute essentials. "Obstructions in the execution of the laws" and anything else designed to counter that document "are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency."

Of special emphasis was Washington's warning against political parties and the tendency to put party will ahead of national will. He already had seen the sowing of factional seeds within his own cabinet. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson had been at loggerheads, and each was gathering a following. (We still see the fruit of those seeds in our political parties today, with many of their members putting party before what is best for the nation.)

Alexander Hamilton

Thomas Jefferson

The "spirit of party," Washington declared, "is truly their worst enemy." It would lead to "alternate domination" by the parties and "the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension," which is "itself a frightful despotism."

An offshoot of political factions would be the dangers of people with political ambitions, the desire for personal power, advantage, and wealth.

He warned of destruction that results when one branch of government usurps the authority of another branch (e.g., the judiciary trying to legislate). That, he said, "is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."

Churches, the moral foundation of the nation

But Washington also realized and articulated in his address the real foundation of free government: "religion and morality," "these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens." But he added that morality couldn't "be maintained without religion." He noted that "reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

Finally, he warned of public debt, something that Hamilton was all for. Washington advised using credit "as sparingly as possible," "shunning occasions of expense," paying it off promptly, saving during peacetime so it would be unnecessary in wartime, and "not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear."

Subsequent history, especially our own current national condition, reveals that we promptly forgot or ignored practically everything Washington warned us of. Sectionalism resulted in the War Between the States; party politics have blinded us to the real needs of the nation; we became entangled in numerous foreign alliances, many of which led to war; we've done our best to drive religion from the public square and to restrict its free exercise; we've trampled all over the Constitution, and many are even advocating abolishing it, if not entirely then certain rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights; statesmen have become mere politicians, concerned only about retaining their political positions and amassing personal wealth; and our national debt has been pushed beyond all imagination into multiple trillions of dollars.

If Washington could see now how things have gone to pot in the nation he left to his successors, he would roll over in his grave. Or maybe raise an army of true patriots to wage another American Revolution.