The Controversy Surrounding the Authorship of Washington's Farewell Address, Lecture notes of French

Download The Controversy Surrounding the Authorship of Washington's Farewell Address and more Lecture notes French in PDF only on Docsity! Washington's Farewell and the Historians: zA Critical "Review IN SEPTEMBER, 1796, a tired and embittered President Washing- ton was determined to exclude himself from consideration for a third term of office. The Father of His Country had wanted to retire at the end of his first term in 1792 and conceived of the idea of announcing his exit from public life by publishing a valedictory address. However, the urging of friends including both Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson had convinced him to stay on for another term. But four years later, even the entreaties of his friends were not enough to dissuade Washington from his chosen course; the barbs thrown by Republican journalists had penetrated the thin- skinned President. Early in 1796 he revived his old idea of issuing a valedictory to the American people. The rather lengthy message slowly took shape and first appeared in Claypoole's ^American "Daily ^Advertiser, No. 5444, on September 19, 1796.1 The Farewell Address, as it came to be called, was soon elevated to the status of a sacred document, rivaled only by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and, later, the Monroe Doctrine. No ambitious nineteenth-century American politician could afford not to pay lip service to Washington's parting advice "to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world" when discussing any diplomatic question of import. In the i88o's, for example, the custom arose in the Senate of reading the Farewell Address on Washington's Birthday and this tradition, formalized by standing order in 1901, has continued to the present day.2 The first President's name was often invoked during the foreign policy debates of the years between Versailles and Pearl Harbor, usually by 1 The Address was given directly to the press. It was never spoken by Washington. 2 Congressional Record, 75th Congress, 1st Session, 1458. The Address was supposed to be alternately read by a Democrat and a Republican to signify bipartisan adherence to its precepts. 173 174 ARTHUR A. MARKOWITZ April those who favored a more limited role for the United States in world affairs. Even today, after nearly three decades of world involvement and responsibility, so-called "neoisolationists" are calling for re- trenchment both in foreign aid and military commitments. Clearly, the cycle has swung full circle. Political oratory has changed dras- tically and the references to the Founding Fathers are fewer, but the ideas expressed in Washington's Farewell, as they have tradi- tionally been defined, are once again in vogue. The historical evolution of the Farewell Address within the realm of American political folklore is an exceedingly involved story which need not concern us here.3 Rather, this article will deal with the historiography of the Farewell, specifically the controversies con- cerning authorship, motivation, and meaning. The debate over the authorship of the Farewell Address began in the early nineteenth century and has continued almost unabated to the present. Despite the seemingly unitary nature of the question, there are really two key issues involved—the actual literary author- ship of the document and the philosophical origins of the ideas it contains. That the two are not necessarily synonymous is a fact which many historians have neglected to point out. The first phase of the controversy revolves around the question of literary authorship. After Alexander Hamilton's death in 1804,4 a group of Hamilton partisans led by his widow claimed that he and not Washington had authored the Farewell Address. Proof of this fact, they insisted, existed in the late President's private corre- spondence which was being kept closed by his family. This partisan view was still being expounded by the Hamilton family and others into the twentieth century. In 3"!he Intimate j(jfe Of ^Alexander Hamilton, Allan McLane Hamilton charged that certain incrimi- nating papers had been withheld by "a small coterie of Washington's friends" in order to give the President full credit for the address. These secret papers, he insisted, "certainly show that there was collaboration, at least, and probably that much of the original mate- 3 For a brief but penetrating discussion of this development, see Albert K. Weinberg, "Washington's 'Great Rule' In Its Historical Evolution," Historiography And Urbanization: Essays In American History In Honor Of W, Stull Holt, Eric Goldman, ed. (Baltimore, 1941), 109-138; and the same author's "The Historical Meaning Of The American Doctrine Of Isolation," American Political Science Review, XXXIV (1940), 539-547. 4 Washington had died in 1799. 1970 WASHINGTON S FAREWELL 177 that Washington had on other occasions "solicited and gratefully accepted Hamilton's ideas and skills in literary structure." Was it not natural for him to invoke Hamilton's aid on the document through which he was to make known his retirement?15 Paltsits concludes that the drafting of the Farewell Address was a joint project, "a picture of cooperative enterprise in which Washing- ton was always the principal, and Hamilton a devoted, friendly, and disinterested volunteer."16 Washington's ideas or "sentiments," he feels, are dominant throughout the Address. Hamilton knew from Washington that whatever he might do in "reshaping, rewriting, or forming anew a draft," the results had to be "predicated upon the sentiments which Washington had indicated."17 Hamilton always had recognized that in the last analysis, the President would be the final judge. "Washington," Paltsits declares, "was his own editor; and what he published to the world as a Farewell Address, was in its final form and content what he had chosen to make it by processes of adoption and adaption. By this procedure every idea became his own without equivocation."18 Recent students of the period like John C. Miller, Felix Gilbert, and Douglas Southall Freeman and his associates accept Paltsits' contention that the final literary product represents a collaboration of the thoughts of Washington, Madison (who had written the 1792 valedictory), and Hamilton, with Washington serving as the final editor.19 But however much historians owe to Paltsits for his pioneer- 15 Victor Hugo Paltsits, ed. Washington's Farewell Address, In Facsimile, With Translitera- tions Of All The Drafts Of Washington, Madison, And Hamilton, Together With Their Cor- respondence And Other Supporting Documents, Edited With A History Of Its Origins, Reception By The Nation, Rise Of The Controversey Respecting Its Authorship, And A Bibliography (New York, 1935), 28. 16 Ibid., 75. vi Ibid., S3- 18 Ibid., xv. 19 John C. Miller, The Federalist Era, 1789-1801 (New York, i960), 197; Felix Gilbert, The Beginnings Of American Foreign Policy: To The Farewell Address (New York, 1961), Chapter V; and John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth, George Washington: First In Peace [Vol. VII of Douglas Southall Freeman's biography of Washington. Freeman didn't live to complete this volume and it was finished by his two research assistants.] (New York, 1957), 398-400. One notable exception is a two-volume biography of Washington written by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson and George Waldo Dunn which greatly expands Washington's role in the formulation of the Farewell Address. The President's directives to Hamilton, the authors note, "were as painstaking as those of a teacher of English composition." They point out that I78 ARTHUR A. MARKOWITZ April ing and exhaustive research, the fact remains that his is a rather sterile analysis, narrow in scope and largely devoid of historical significance. He makes no attempt to trace the origins of the ideas contained in the Address or to place them in their proper context. Rather, we are led to believe that the document took shape within an intellectual vacuum and represented only the thought of the three contributing authors. The noted diplomatic historian Samuel Flagg Bemis was the first to approach the question of authorship on a more meaningful level. In an article in the ^American Historical Review in 1933, Bemis antic- ipated Paltsits' conclusions regarding literary authorship of the document.20 However, he goes on to insist that the ideas contained in the Address did not originate with either Washington or Hamilton but were merely the restatement of commonly accepted principles of the time. The experience of twenty years of independence had made American statesmen very wary of close ties with Europe.21 The writ- ings of Thomas Paine, John Jay, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson are, he says, "full of affirmations that it was the true policy of the United States to steer clear of European politics."22 In a later article, Bemis attempted to assess John Quincy Adams' influence in the formulation of the Farewell Address. In 1793 young Adams had written two letters under the pseudonyms "Columbus" and "Marcellus" warning of the perils of foreign intrigue in American domestic affairs. Later, as Minister to the Netherlands, Adams had seen at first hand the danger of foreign meddling. He was convinced, says Bemis, "that French diplomacy was bent on treating the United States as it did the satellite republics which it set up for its own "one only need compare the different drafts to recognize how completely the Address is Washington's in both thought and form." "Especially noteworthy," they insist, "is the fact that it is Washington's corrections and additions which give high distinction to the paper." Nathaniel Wright Stephenson and George Waldo Dunn, George Washington (New York, 1940), II, 41a. 20 "The trunk and branches of the sturdy tree were Washington's. The shimmering foliage dancing and shining in the sunlight was Hamilton's." In the writing of the final text, the two men thought in "absolute unison." Samuel Flagg Bemis, "Washington's Farewell Address: A Foreign Policy Of Independence," American Historical Review, XXXIX (1934), 262. 21 In this regard, see Bemis' earlier article, "The Background Of Washington's Foreign Policy," Yale Review, XVI (1927), 316-337. 22 Bemis, "Washington's Farewell Address," 260-261. 1970 WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL 179 purposes in Europe," and he voiced these fears in his private corre- spondence with his father, the Vice-President.23 Washington had read both the "Columbus" and "Marcellus" letters when they had appeared in the newspapers, and the Vice- President had undoubtedly showed him and perhaps Hamilton his son's private correspondence. After a detailed analysis, Bemis con- cludes that John Quincy Adams' public letters in the American press and his private notes to his father "had an appreciable influence upon the mind of the President as he thought over what he desired to say in the Address."24 Indeed, Bemis feels that "so clearly do the thoughts of the younger Adams, even little traces of his phraseology, appear in the Farewell Address that one may wonder whether Washington may not have had still before him the letters of "Colum- bus" when he drew up the first draft of that document."25 Later in this same article, however, Bemis cautions the reader not to conclude that John Quincy Adams was "unduly responsible" for the ideas contained in Washington's valedictory. Returning to his earlier position, he concludes that "presumably, the Address would have been given out, in somewhat the same form, if Adams had never lived, for these ideas already were common to American statesmen and diplomatists of the time." They were "the fruit of American diplomatic experience since the Declaration of Independence."26 According to Bemis, John Quincy Adams shared these principles of foreign policy which were confirmed by his close-hand observation of the wars of the French Revolution. "Thus validated, they had reinforced Washington's own opinions and even shaped their expres- sion a little."27 Two exceedingly able scholars, John C. Miller and Alexander DeConde, have refined Bemis' thesis, arguing that the ideas ex- pressed in the Farewell were the common property of the Federalist party and cannot be said to represent the exclusive thoughts of any one man. "Every point made in this valedictory," Miller notes, "had 23 Samuel Flagg Bemis, "John Quincy Adams and George Washington," Proceedings Of The Massachusetts Historical Society, LXVII (October, 1941-May, 1944), 375. MZW/.,377. 25 Ibid., 381. 26 Ibid. Also see Bemis, "The Background Of Washington's Foreign Policy," and J. Fred Rippy, America And The Strife Of Europe (Chicago, 1938), Chapter I. 27 Bemis, "John Quincy Adams and George Washington," 381. I 82 ARTHUR A. MARKOWITZ April principles which had guided his policy, just as other rulers and statesmen of the eighteenth century were accustomed to doing in their political testaments/' By revising Washington's draft for a valedictory, Gilbert feels that Hamilton succeeded in transforming it into such a document.39 Washington's fundamental concern, Gilbert insists, was "the need for overcoming the spirit of party in decisions in foreign policy." The President saw himself as the nonpartisan leader of the nation whose duty was to urge all politicians to unite under "the banner of true national interest." Thus, Gilbert views the Farewell Address as a warning against "the spirit of faction" and against "the danger of letting ideological predilections and prejudices enter considera- tions of foreign policy."40 Samuel Flagg Bemis has persistently and persuasively argued that Washington's Farewell clearly enunciated "a foreign policy of independence" at a time when the French Government was trying to exert an influence in American domestic affairs. The immediate purpose of the Address, Bemis says, "was to strike a powerful blow against French meddling in American affairs."41 He insists that the Farewell Address did not disown the French Alliance, but "taught a patronizing ally that we were an independent and a sovereign nation, and that the French Republic could not use in America . . . the lever of a political opposition to overthrow any government that stood in the way of French policy, purpose, and interest."42 A number of historians have preferred to view the Farewell Address as a constitutional document—an effort by Washington to reinforce the sagging concept of unity and boost a nascent national- ism. In his multivolume <*A History Of The United States, Edward Channing suggests that Washington regarded all feelings of section- alism with deep foreboding because they tended "to teach the minds 39 Gilbert, The Beginnings Of American Foreign Policy, 134. John C. Miller, p . 197, also accepts this view of the Farewell Address. An older work which offers a similar interpretation is Horace E. Scudder, George Washington: An Historical Biography (Boston, 1891), 243. 40 Gilbert, The Beginnings Of American Foreign Policy, 123-124. Paul Varg believes that Washington's fears were groundless because the pro-French sympathies of most Republicans were "rigidly subordinate to their American Nationalism." Paul A. Varg, Foreign Policies Of The Founding Fathers (East Lansing, 1963), 113. 41 Bemis, "Washington's Farewell Address," 263. 4 2 Ibid., 267-268. For a similar interpretation, see Esmond Wright, Fabric of Freedom, 1763-1800 (New York, 1961), 202-213. 1970 WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL 183 of men to consider the Union as an object to which they ought not to attach their hopes and fortunes." The purpose of his valedictory, says this consensus historian, was to implore the people to look upon the federal system as the " 'paladium of your potential safety and prosperity'" and to "discountenance any suspicion that it can be abandoned."43 Nathan Schachner essentially agrees with Channing and takes direct issue with Bemis. Washington, he says, very clearly recognized that the real threat to the Union was internal and not external. "With all the earnestness at his command, Washington warned against party passions and 'designing men' who sought to create the impression that 'there is a real difference of local interests and views based on geographical dispersion.'" Schachner rather carelessly concludes that "the true interrelation and interdependence of North, South and West" was "the major and indeed the only theme of the Valedictory."44 Charles A. Beard's view of the Farewell Address in The Republic (published in 1943) was considerably different from what he had said some ten years earlier in The Idea Of Rational Interest. The earlier work had been written during a time of intense introspection. Beard, the isolationist, had viewed the Farewell Address as a doctrine of national interest. Washington had realized that "nations in their intercourse with one another were governed by their inter- ests" and hoped that the young republic would profit from "a knowl- edge of these stubborn truths."45 This advice, according to Beard, was as relevant in 1934 as it had been in 1796 because he felt that it was still in the interest of the United States to pursue a foreign policy of nonentanglement. When Beard was writing The %epublic> the United States was engaged in a desperate struggle with the totalitarian Axis nations and old American institutions now took on a new meaning for the old progressive historian. So did the Farewell Address. Washington's valedictory, he concludes, was at bottom "a plea for the continua- tion of the Union and constitutional government." It "posits the 43 Edward Channing, A History Of The United States (New York, 1927), IV, 156. 4 4 Nathan Schachner, The Founding Fathers (New York, 1954), 403. 45 Charles A. Beard, The Idea Of National Interest: An Analytical Study In American Foreign Policy (New York, 1934), 43. 184 ARTHUR A. MARKOWITZ April Union as necessary to the security, the progress, and the true grandeur of the nation." In that sense, says Beard, "it was above all partisanship." "It provides guidance for us as long as consti- tutional government endures."46 Another group of historians led by Alexander DeConde have taken the position that the Farewell Address was wholly a partisan document. Washington's aim, they insist, was to defend his admin- istration against Republican attacks. They feel that by 1796 even the idealistic Washington had come to realize that nonpartisanship was a myth. The President had become the central figure in emerg- ing party politics47 and the Farewell "laid the basis for Federalist strategy of using Washington's great prestige to appeal to patriot- ism, as against the evil of foreign machinations, to make 'Federalist' and 'Patriot' synonymous in the minds of the electorate."48 The revisionists argue that at the time the Address was recognized for what it really was—"a political manifesto"—"the opening blast in the campaign to prevent the election to the presidency of Thomas Jefferson."49 Perhaps the most unusual interpretation of the motivation behind the Farewell is given by Harold W. Bradley in an article which appeared in the Journal Of Southern History in 1945. Bradley feels that the old warrior possessed "a cautious humanitarianism" which led him to "deplore the cruelties of war." While he admits that the General was no pacifist, he does believe that his antipathy to war 46 Charles A. Beard, The Republic: Conversations On Fundamentals (New York, 1943), 48. 47 This development is discussed in John Bach McMaster, A History Of The People Of The United States From The Revolution To The Civil War (New York, 1919), II, 290-291. 48 DeConde, "Washington's Farewell, The French Alliance, And The Election Of 1796," 649. 49 Ibid, Most political historians of the period seem to concur with DeConde in this regard. See, for example, Wilfred E. Binkley, American Political Parties: Their Natural History, 4th ed. (New York, 1963), 51; Charles, 48; Noble E. Cunningham Jr., The Jeffersonian Republicans: The Formation Of Party Organization, 1789-1801 (Chapel Hill, 1957), 94; and Marshall Smelser, "George Washington And The Alien And Sedition Acts," American Historical Review, LIX (1954), 326; and "The Jacobin Phrenzy: Federalism And Liberty, Equality and Fraternity/' Review Of Politics, XII (1951), 476-477. In the latter article, Smelser refers to the Farewell Address as ' a sizzling party paper . . . full of hot phrases, smoking with indignation at all the public imprecations fired off against him and his administration" (p. 476). Washington partisan John Spencer Bassett, writing in 1906, had insisted that "an interference with the impending election was far from Washington's intention." John Spencer Bassett, The Federalist Era, 1789-1801 (New York, 1906), 147. 1970 WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL 187 policy of isolation as "a temporary expedient" rather than as "a cardinal rule" of United States foreign policy.59 Blakeslee agreed with this assessment, reminding his readers that the General had spoken of a time in the future when "our institutions being firmly consolidated and working with complete success, we might safely and perhaps beneficially take part in the consultations held by foreign states for the advantage of the nations."60 Internationalist Louis B. Wright, writing in 1943, was especially fearful that the United States would crawl back into her isolationist cocoon at the end of the war. Washington's valedictory, Wright declared, was merely "a defense of his own policies and a plea for caution in foreign relations during the immediate future."61 He was giving realistic advice to the nation "as it was," not "as it might be ten or more generations later."62 Now (in 1943), the United States had outgrown the weaknesses which the first President was trying to protect, and modern technology had made the ancient dream of withdrawal within our borders "a fantasy." Wright argued that if Washington were living in the present, he would agree that the national interest now demanded "the assumption of international leadership and international responsibility."63 Alexander DeConde, like Wright, feels that it is foolish to believe that Washington was attempting to establish long-enduring prin- ciples to guide the nation's future foreign policy. To do that, he insists, "is to endow Washington with powers reserved for the gods of Olympus."64 Washington's main interest, says DeConde, was in negating the alliance with France, and he realized that for the greatest psychological appeal any attack on the Alliance would have to be clothed in terms of "non-involvement with Europe." In time, 5° John Holladay Latan6, From Isolation To Leadership: A Review Of American Foreign Policy, rev. ed. (Garden City, 1922), 11. 60 George H. Blakeslee, The Recent Foreign Policy Of The United States: Problems In Ameri- can Cooperation With Other Powers (New York, 1925), 19-20. 61 Louis B. Wright, "The Founding Fathers And 'Splendid Isolation,' " Huntington Library Quarterly, VI (1943), 175. 62 Ibid. For an interesting discussion of this point by an internationalist-minded nine- teenth-century Secretary of State, see Richard Olney, "International Isolation Of The United States," Atlantic Monthly•, LXXXI (1898), 577-590. 63 Wright, 196. Nathan Schachner, p. 405, also catapults Washington into the present and comes to essentially the same conclusion. 64 DeConde, Entangling Alliance, 503. I 88 ARTHUR A. MARKOWITZ April "this specific meaning was lost and only the generalization remained."65 Samuel Flagg Bemis also curtly dismisses the claim that Wash- ington was seeking to establish a "Great Rule," but he sees a totally different meaning in the Address than DeConde. In Bemis' opinion it was aimed not at the French Alliance but at foreign (French) meddling which Washington considered "one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government." "What we have generally con- strued as a policy of isolation," Bemis declares, ought really to be interpreted "as a policy of vigilant defense and maintenance of sovereign national independence against foreign meddling in our internal domestic concerns."66 Conversely, J. Fred Rippy feels that Washington was trying to lay down a general rule for the conduct of foreign affairs, at least for the immediate future. He argues that the President was fearful that temptation to depart from the policy of isolation would have to be faced in the future—even the immediate future, because European nations were "neither willing to consider America a realm apart from their political activities nor content to assume that the United States could not be induced to participate in European politics."67 In this sense, says Rippy, the Farewell Address was really Washington's political testament. Felix Gilbert, as noted earlier, emphasizes Alexander Hamilton's role in formulating the section of the Farewell dealing with foreign affairs. It was Hamilton who added the "Great Rule" of foreign policy which was based on "a realistic evaluation of America's situ- ation and interests." Thus, in Gilbert's opinion, Hamilton was 65 DeConde, "Washington's Farewell, The French Alliance, And The Election of 1796," 650. Roland Usher, pp. 33-3$, presents a similar view of the Alliance. Richard Van Alstyne, on the other hand, argues that the French Alliance, in spite of its provisions for permanency, "was no real embarrassment to the administration." Richard W. Van Alstyne, American Diplomacy In Action: A Series Of Case Studies (Stanford, 1944), 619. 66 Bemis, "Washington's Farewell Address/' 268. 67 Rippy, 19. Rippy feels that Washington was merely expressing sentiments which were quite common at the time. Furthermore, he insists that Washington was not a dyed-in-the- wool isolationist. "More emphatic assertions of isolationism had been made in the past," he notes, and "other statesmen of the year 1796 might have expressed them with greater emphasis" (p. 8). 197° WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL 189 responsible for turning Washington's rather idealistic valedictory into "the first statement . . . of the principles of American foreign policy."68 In his scantily documented but none the less important book, The Contours Of ^American History> New Left historian William Appleman Williams sees the Farewell Address as a manifestation of a developing American tradition of expansion. Washington's vale- dictory, says Williams, was, at bottom, a plea to his countrymen "to calm their fears and take advantage of the opportunity that was theirs to become the leading pioneer of the world." "Far from being a call for isolation what Washington issued was a mercantilist manifesto for an unchallengeable empire." In William's opinion Washington's Farewell ranks as one of the great documents of what he refers to as "America's Age of Mercantilism."69 The debate over the Farewell Address is similar in many ways to the controversy surrounding the Monroe Doctrine. In both cases we find ourselves confronted with a myriad of interpretations concerning authorship, purpose, and meaning, each reflecting in some way, the insights and biases of the observer. The question of actual literary authorship of the Farewell has become somewhat clearer thanks to twentieth-century scholarship. Victor H. Paltsits shows that the Address was probably a product of the combined pens of Washington, Hamilton, and, to a lesser extent, Madison, with the President serving as the editor-in-chief. Felix Gilbert assigns a much greater role to Hamilton but real- istically concludes that "it seems sound procedure to regard as the author of a document a man who signed it and took responsibility for it."70 68 Gilbert, The Beginnings Of American Foreign Policy, 135. 69 William Appleman Williams, The Contours Of American History (Cleveland, 1961), 173-174. This view is seconded by Burton Ira Kaufman, the editor of a recently published book, which conveniently brings together a sampling of the differing interpretations of the Farewell. The valedictory, says Kaufman, was "A Statement of Empire" which is under- standable "only in relation to Washington's concept of his country's imperial future, a concept whose roots lie in the history of both the country and the man." Burton Ira Kaufman, "Washington's Farewell Address: A Statement of Empire," in Washington's Farewell Address: The View From The 20th Century (Chicago, 1969), 171. 70 Gilbert, The Beginnings Of American Foreign Policy, 168.