Author Talks: George Washington and the Hyper-Partisan Now

This program is part of the series Made by History: the Complicated Legacies of American Presidents.

Daily Beast editor-in-chief John Avlon has called George Washington’s farewell address, “the most famous speech you’ve never read.” His new new book, Washington’s Farewell: the Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations, was heavily researched at The New York Public Library. It places Washington’s legendary goodbye, which cried for national unity and warned against political partisanship, in the context of Washington’s presidency and the uncertain future our young nation faced. Avlon will speak with New York Times political correspondent Maggie Haberman both about his book and about the extent to which Washingtonrsquo;s predictions have or have not come true today.

“The alternate domination of one faction over another,” George Washington wrote, “sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”

The NYPL is home to two drafts of George Washington's farewell address. A working version by Alexander Hamilton and a final draft, in Washington's hand, which was delivered to The American Daily Advertiser, the newspaper in which it was first printed.

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