What Washington Feared

Washington published the Farewell Address on September 19, 1796, in Claypoole's American Daily Advertiser in Philadelphia. It was never delivered as a speech. It appeared first in print and was immediately reprinted across the country. He warned against three things: the spirit of party, the danger of sectionalism, and permanent foreign alliances. All three were already present in the republic when he wrote.

By September 1796, the United States had a functioning national bank, a standing army, an established foreign policy of neutrality, and two organized political parties. Washington had wanted none of the last of these. The Democratic-Republican party, organized around Jefferson and Madison in opposition to Hamilton's financial program, had developed into a formal opposition force. The Federalists had organized in response. Washington had watched the cabinet he assembled dissolve into warring factions.

The Jay Treaty of 1795 had been the final break. Jefferson and Madison had opposed it. Hamilton had defended it in a series of essays as Camillus. The House of Representatives had tried to block appropriations for the treaty's implementation. Washington had refused to submit the negotiating instructions to the House. The party division that Hamilton and Jefferson had taken into the press in 1793 had now reached the legislative branch.

Madison drafted the first version of the Farewell Address in June 1792, when Washington considered retiring after his first term. Washington set it aside and served a second term. In May 1796, he sent Madison's draft to Hamilton along with his own notes and asked Hamilton either to revise the old draft or write a new one. Hamilton wrote a new one. Washington edited it extensively, incorporating language and revisions across multiple drafts. The final version was Washington's document in argument and in authority. Most of the prose is Hamilton's.

The authorship question became contentious after Washington's death. Hamilton's family and Washington's estate disputed it for decades. The documentary record, consisting of Hamilton's draft, Washington's edits, and the correspondence between them, is at Founders Online and was compiled in the editorial note to the Farewell Address document. The episode is explicit about this record.

Washington devoted the largest portion of the address to the danger of political parties. He called the spirit of party "a fire not to be quenched" that demanded "a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame." He was not describing a theoretical risk. He had watched it happen in his own cabinet between 1791 and 1794.

On foreign policy, Washington argued for commercial relations with all nations and political entanglement with none. He specifically warned against "permanent alliances," a phrase that has been cited in American foreign policy debate in every generation since. He did not argue for isolation; he argued against binding the republic to the fortunes of any foreign power.

The original newspaper printing appeared in Claypoole's American Daily Advertiser on September 19, 1796. The same day it appeared in John Fenno's Gazette of the United States. Washington's final manuscript, dated September 19, 1796, was purchased by James Lenox in 1850 and is now at the New York Public Library. Hamilton's draft is in the Hamilton Papers at the Library of Congress. Founders Online carries the complete documentary record including all drafts, the Hamilton-Washington correspondence on the address, and the editorial note explaining the authorship history.