By: Zac Frederick
For my historical analysis project, I have chosen to analyze Washington’s Farewell Address given following his departure as America’s first president. The piece was written and published in 1796 by George Washington, and from my preliminary research he was also assisted by Alexander Hamilton in the creation of the piece. Though the nature of the content is an address to the American people, it was not given as a speech, but rather it was published in the newspapers as publication.
One thing that drew me to the document is the nature of the piece as a political strategy recommendation. Though it is somewhat lengthy at a glance, the ideas Washington describes are very well summarized. I’m sure many of these recommendations could be discussed by a man of Washington’s intellect for literal days, however I was intrigued to see that this address offers a “short and sweet” version of what Washington believes will be very relevant advice over the coming decades of American history.
Within the document Washington offers about four main warnings to the American people, and a good understanding of each warming requires individual research regarding both the context and the rationale of each. This will involve a simultaneous approach to each facet, and each component will come together in the actual annotations. The first steps of research (including figuring out what the four warnings actually are) are in process, and once a general idea of the document is obtained I will be able to dig deeper in the more of the specifics.
One challenge I have found so far is being able to identify credible and varying sources. Whereas a simple Google search is often the first step to research, this does not give you every source you will end up using for your project. While it might yield a good bit of knowledge, a good majority of these sources have questionable credibility! Of course, the first step is realizing all of this, and now that I know this I am more willing to dig deeper – all in the name of Hamilton!
