By: Ian Byers
For the historical document that I am going to annotate, I chose George Washington’s Farewell Address, which was initially published in a newspaper in 1796. This was only about 10 weeks before the 1796 election, so many people who expected Washington to run again were surprised. This document went through multiple phases of writing, as Washington had originally intended to retire at the end of his first term in 1792. The 1792 draft was written by George Washington and James Madison, but Alexander Hamilton also help to write the final version.
I have read this document before this class, and I chose it for this assignment because I have always found Washington’s advice and predictions to be uncannily accurate. I am only annotating the first section of the document, but later sections go into detail about the danger of alliances and advocates for isolationism from European countries, which was a common American policy all the way until World War Two. Additionally, Washington set the informal precedent of a President serving for a maximum of two terms, which would last for a similar period of time. Although not all of Washington’s warnings were heeded, we can see that he was largely correct about the trouble these things would cause. For one, he warned against political parties, or factions. While parties have played a huge role in American politics since then, Washington was right in assessing that parties would lead to a large divide in the American populace.
The largest volume of research that I will need to do for this document is about the policies of the Washington administration, as well as other writings about politics by Washington. As he was involved in military service for a large part of his life, and often expressed dislike for serving as president, these may be hard to find.
So far, most of the major events of Washington’s presidency are well documented. However, it has been somewhat difficult to find some of Washington’s personal opinions on why he chose these policies. Often it seems that he simply chose the policies of his cabinet, which makes it hard to decipher Washington’s own intentions.