Authors: Joseph J. Ellis
T
HE MANNER
in which the Farewell
Address was actually composed, as it turned out, served as a nearly perfect
illustration of its central message—the need to subordinate narrow
interests to the larger cause. Much ink has been spilled by several generations
of scholars in an effort to determine who wrote the bulk of the words that
eventually found their way into print and then into the history books. Like a
false scent, the authorship question has propelled historians down labyrinthine
trails of evidence in quest of the real and true author. Meanwhile, the object
of the hunt sits squarely in the middle of the evidentiary trail, so obvious
that it is ignored. Namely, the creation of the Farewell Address was an
inherently collaborative process. Some of the words were Madison’s; most
of the words were Hamilton’s; all the ideas were Washington’s. The
drafting and editing of the Farewell Address in effect became a metaphor for
the kind of collective effort Washington was urging on the American people as a
whole.
48
The story
had its start four years earlier, in May of 1792, when Washington approached
Madison to help him compose a valedictory address. At the time fully convinced
that he would step down after one term, Washington had chosen Madison because
his two most trusted cabinet members, Hamilton and Jefferson, were too closely
associated with the party disputes he wanted to condemn. Madison made extensive
notes on the basis of three conversations with Washington, then drafted a
document that employed the president’s own language for many key
passages: “a spirit of party in the Government was becoming a fresh
source of difficulty”; “we are all Children of the same
Country”; the nation’s “essential interests are the same
… its diversities arising from climate and from soil will naturally form
a mutual relation of parts” and serve as the formulation for “an
affectionate and permanent Union.” It was Madison who first proposed that
the Farewell Address not be delivered as a speech to Congress, but that it be
printed in the newspapers as “a direct address to the people who are your
only constituents.” After Washington listened to the unanimous advice of
all his cabinet officers and reluctantly agreed to serve a second term, he
tucked away Madison’s draft for another day.
49
That day
arrived exactly four years later. On May 15, 1796, Washington sent Hamilton the
“first draft” of a retirement address—no amount of persuasion
could change his mind this time—that would announce his departure from
public life. The first section of this document reproduced Madison’s
draft of 1792, which was highly ironic, because Madison had become the primary
leader of the Republican opposition to Washington’s policies in the
Congress and was therefore a rather dramatic example of the party spirit that
his former words had warned against. (The Federalists referred to Madison as
“the general” of the opposition, calling Jefferson, his mentor
secluded at Monticello, “the generalissimo.”) Washington included
the earlier Madison draft for two reasons: First, it expressed in clear and
forceful language a major point he still wanted to make about subordinating
sectional and ideological differences to larger national purposes, all the more
resonant because drafted by someone who seemed to have forgotten the lesson;
and second, its inclusion publicized the fact that he had wanted to retire four
years ago, so his current decision was really the culmination of a
long-standing preference.
50
This latter
point was extremely important to Washington. His most virulent critics were
currently claiming that his support for the unpopular Jay’s Treaty made
him unelectable in 1796, so his decision to retire was not truly a voluntary
act, but a forced recognition of the political realities. Hamilton tried to
reassure him that his sensitivities on this score were excessive, that if he
did choose to run for a third term, he would win in a walk. (And Hamilton was
surely correct.) But Washington wanted not a shred of doubt to remain that his
decision to step aside was wholly voluntary. This was both a matter of personal
pride and a crucial political precedent. By including the Madison draft of
1792, he advertised his reluctance to serve even his second term, thereby
enhancing the credibility of his voluntary rejection of a third. As Washington
put it, “it may contribute to blunt, if it does not turn aside, some of
the shafts … among which—conviction of fallen popularity, and
despair of being re-elected, [which] will be levelled at me with dexterity
& keenness.”
51
The second
section of this first draft that Washington sent to Hamilton focused on the
foreign policy issues that had dominated his second term. He was fully aware
that Hamilton had supported Jay’s Treaty. (He had even recommended that
Hamilton consult Jay before putting pen to paper.) But he also wanted Hamilton
to know that none of his or Jay’s pro-English prejudices should seep into
his draft of the document; it should emphasize American neutrality and
“promote the true and permanent interests of the country.”
Washington’s views, not Hamilton’s, must prevail. Hamilton would be
the draftsman, but Washington must be the author. “I am anxious, always,
to compare the opinions of those in whom I confide with one another,”
Washington explained, “and these again (without being bound by them) with
my own, that I may extract all the good I can.” Hamilton required no
elaborate instructions on the procedure. It was the same process Washington had
developed with his staff as commander in chief of the Continental Army, then
implemented with his cabinet as president. Hamilton had played the same role in
both contexts. All major decisions were collective occasions, in which
advisers, like spokes on a wheel, made contributions, usually in written form.
But in the end the final decision, to include the final choice of words, came
together at the center, which was always Washington.
52
Hamilton
also realized that he was being asked to write for posterity as much as the
present. “It has been my object to render this act importantly and
lastingly useful,” he confided to Washington, “and avoid all just
cause of present exception, to embrace such reflections and sentiments as will
wear well, progress in approbation with time & redound to future
reputation.” He devoted a full two months to revising Washington’s
draft, amplifying Madison’s earlier account of the need to rise above
party differences and rally behind the elected representatives of the national
government.
53
On July 30,
he sent the fruits of his labors to Washington, who found the Hamilton draft
“exceedingly just, & just such as ought to be inculcated.” His
only reservation related to length: “All the columns of a large Gazette
would scarcely, I conceive, contain the present draft,” Washington noted,
adding at the end, “I may be mistaken.” (He was.) Hamilton was less
sure he had done the best job possible and immediately began work on a wholly
new draft, which he submitted to Washington two weeks later. But Washington
liked the earlier draft better.
54
Over the
next month, edited versions of that draft passed back and forth several times,
with Washington pressing Hamilton for clarifications, deleting certain
passages, adding others: “I shall expunge all that is marked in the paper
as unimportant,” he wrote on August 25, “and as you perceive some
marginal notes, written with a pencil, I pray you to give the sentiments mature
consideration.” If Hamilton saw fit to make additional revisions on his
own, he should “let them be so clearly interlined-erased-or referred to
in the margins that no mistake may happen.” Washington wanted no
last-minute changes smuggled in without his approval. Even when the final draft
was ready for the printer in September, he made changes in 174 out of 1,086
lines in his own hand and reviewed the punctuation throughout—a final
scan, so the printer observed firsthand, “in which he was very
minute.” It seems fair to conclude that what we call
“Washington’s Farewell Address” is not misnamed.
55
What was
Hamilton’s contribution? Chiefly to assure that the elaboration of
Washington’s ideas occurred within a rhetorical framework that maintained
a stately and dignified tone throughout, and to sustain a palpable cogency and
sense of proportion in developing Washington’s argument, which itself
embodied the self-assurance so central to his major theme about the nation
itself. Hamilton had nearly perfect pitch for Washington’s language,
having begun his public career drafting letters and memoranda for
Washington’s signature as a staff officer during the war. He was
therefore well practiced in subordinating his own inclinations and style to
Washington’s larger purposes. In the Farewell Address, the result is
nearly seamless. When combined with the collaborative character of the drafting
process, it becomes virtually impossible to tell where one voice ends and
another begins.
But Hamilton was also such a virtuoso performer in his
own right, unmatched within the revolutionary generation for his capacity to
deliver powerful prose on a tight deadline, that there are moments in the
Farewell Address when his own distinctive voice breaks through. For example,
while Washington agreed with Hamilton’s version of what the
constitutional settlement of 1787–1788 meant, only Hamilton could have
put it this way:
This government, the offspring of our own choice
uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature
deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its
powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision
for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and support.…
The very idea of the power and right of the People to establish Government
presupposes the duty of every Individual to obey the established
Government.
56
Or on the
question of America’s national interest and the foreign policy it
dictated, again the idea is pure Washington, but expressed in language that
flowed in Hamiltonian cadences:
The Great role of conduct for us, in
regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations to have with
them as little political connection as possible.… Europe has a set of
primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she
must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially
foreign to our concerns.… ’Tis our true policy to steer clear of
permanent Alliances, with any portion of the foreign world.… ’Tis
folly for one Nation to look for disinterested favors from another.…
There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate upon real favours
from Nation to Nation. ’Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which
a just pride ought to discard.
57
When
Hamilton showed a late draft of this passage to John Jay for his commentary,
Jay expressed admiration for the style but slight discomfort with the argument.
“It occurs to me,” he wrote to Washington, “that it may not
be perfectly prudent to say that we can never expect Favors from a nation, for
that assertion seems to imply that nations always are, or always ought to be
moved only by interested motives.” Jay’s suggestion came too
late—the Farewell Address was already in the hands of the
printer—but would have made no difference. Washington meant exactly what
Hamilton had said. Jay’s views of prospective English beneficence, like
Jefferson’s views of French solidarity with America, were only seductive
pieces of sentimentality, juvenile illusions in the real world of international
relations.
58
Beyond the
tight cogency and felicitous cadences, Hamilton’s major contribution was
to save Washington from his own personal sentiments. In his May draft,
Washington had included the following paragraph near the start:
I did
not seek the office with which you have honored me … [and now possess]
the grey hairs of a man who has, excepting the interval between the close of
the Revolutionary War, and the organization of the new government—either
in a civil, or military character, spent five and forty years—All the
prime of his life—in serving his country; [may he] be suffered to pass
quietly to the grave—and that his errors, however numerous; if they are
not criminal, may be consigned to the Tomb of oblivion, as he himself will soon
be to the Mansion of Retirement.
59
Hamilton
eliminated the references to “grey hairs,” “prime of his
life,” and “errors, however numerous”; he also altered the
wounded tone of the passage by placing it at the end rather than at the
beginning of the Farewell Address, where it seemed less like a somewhat
pathetic
cri de coeur
than a dignified personal testimonial.
Washington recognized the improvement, congratulating Hamilton for rendering
him “with less egotism,” meaning the Hamilton draft covered the
wounds, or at least prevented the president from displaying them too
conspicuously.
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H
AMILTON
’
S
exquisite sense of affinity for Washington’s mentality failed him only
once, though the failure, and therefore what is in effect the missing section
of the Farewell Address, opens a more expansive window into the national vision
that Washington was trying to project. During the drafting process in the
summer of 1796, Washington kept urging Hamilton to insert a separate section on
the creation of a national university in the capital city now being constructed
on the Potomac. Hamilton resisted the recommendation, arguing quite plausibly
that such a specific proposal was inappropriate for an address designed to
operate at a higher altitude. It was, he suggested, the kind of proposal better
made in the final message to Congress in the fall. But Washington kept
insisting that he wanted the idea to be a featured element in the Farewell
Address: “But to be candid,” he explained, “I much question
whether a recommendation of this measure to the Legislature will have a better
effect now than formerly—It may skew indeed my sense of its importance,
and that it is a sufficient inducement with me to bring the matter before the
public in some shape or another, at the closing Scenes of my political exit
… to set the People ruminating on the importance of the
measure.”
61