Washington’s Farewell Address is a historic key marker to our 250th anniversary as a country this year. 

Not too long before his retirement from the presidency, Washington had endured a time when the country itself was about to undergo a possible ‘second’ republican revolution of sorts. The country was torn between supporting the French Revolution or refusing to have anything to do with it. President Washington and Alexander Hamilton and the Federalist party chose the option of neutrality, staying out of foreign entanglements. Men like Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson, however, chose to ally ideologically with the French, supporting republicanism and the overthrow of absolute monarchy. Washington had witnessed this growing split among his Congress and warned them of political ‘faction’ or ‘party’, which he believed would first weaken and then fervently divide the Union, killing mutual affection for one’s neighbor.

In George Washington’s Farewell Address to the presidency in 1796, at the age of 64, he addressed the nation,

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissention, which in different ages & 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 & miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security & 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 situation of faction was sparked by a group of Girondist elites in France, men like Jean Pierre Brissot, whose goal was to use revolutionary and republican-inspired language to push France into a war with Austria and help spread revolutionary fervor into the Spanish colonies, including Louisiana and parts of Kentucky. (Campbell, 518) Brissot decided to send an emissary to the United States at this time to uphold the Franco-American Treaty of Alliance of 1778. The French minister’s name was Edmond Charles Genêt. In 1793, Genêt came to Charleston, South Carolina and made his way to Philadelphia, amassing popular support for the French Revolution and inciting revolutionary backing from frontier farmers who believed strongly in republican principles. Historian Marco Sioli states in his article “Citizen Genêt and Political Struggle in the Early American Republic”, “If the French Revolution contributed to the enrichment of the frontiersmen’s struggles with ideological content, Genêt’s presence became a reference point for anti-Federalist protest.” (Sioli, 261) 

But what were Genet’s REAL intentions? Was he in the U.S. on account of the French revolutionary government to truly liberate the Americans in Louisiana from Spanish tyranny? The answer is nuanced and complicated. Sioli references three main reasons for Genêt’s presence in the United States as laid out by Brissot: 1) to commission privateers against England; 2) to recruit volunteers and raise money to pay off the revolutionary war debt to France; and 3) raise an army against Spain to free French Americans from Spanish control. (Sioli, 263)

While Brissot was pushing to spread revolutionary ideas throughout the United States and amalgamate a faction of disaffected frontiersmen toward republicanism, his real intention was to protect France’s interests to end Spanish power in places like Louisiana. Genêt’s work was a reflection of that policy. In the late summer of 1793, Spanish agents discovered Genêt’s pamphlet entitled “French Freemen to Their Brothers In Louisiana”, which incited revolution against Spain. In this pamphlet, Genêt expressed the following, 

“We have proved that despotism has not stupefied you, that you have preserved in your hearts the valor, courage and intrepidity of France, that you are worthy of being free and independent, for it is not to our empire, but to that of liberty that we wish to unite you: having become the masters of your actions, you will be able to adopt a republican constitution and supported by France as long as your weakness does not allow you to be able to defend yourself, you will be able to unite voluntarily with her and with your neighbors in the United States, you will be able to cement with the two republics an alliance in which all our political and commercial interests will be merged, on the most liberal basis. Your country will derive the greatest advantages from this happy revolution, and your glory will equal the happiness which you and your children will enjoy. No weakness, no pusillanimity, boldness, resolution, and it will be all right.” (Enclosure)

The Spanish immediately showed this to President Washington.  Though Genêt was recalled back to France in the midst of the Reign of Terror, President Washington allowed him to stay in the country as he would have been executed by the violent Montagnard faction. He eventually married the Governor of New York, George Clinton’s daughter and became an American citizen.

Washington’s response to Genêt was in the spirit of preserving the Union and maintaining a conscientious spirit of neutrality. Washington’s neutrality proclamation of 1793 articulated grave concern for the newly fragile Republic. In it, he mentions the importance of U.S. impartiality toward belligerent nations and that anyone aiding or abetting hostilities among belligerent nations will be punished and stripped of their citizenship.

What historians now call the Genêt Affair has gone down as a mere whisper in history textbooks, but its impact was profound in reality. The country had been deeply divided over the French Revolution and men like Jefferson and Hamilton were at odds on economic policy at home. Moreover, revolution was brewing just south of us on the island of Saint Domingue, today’s Haiti. To have stoked revolutionary fire at home would have broken the Republic into pieces and made France a powerful entity and sole American ally on the western continent. Moreover, France’s enemies would have become our enemies, a devastating principle that would have stripped the new Republic of its sovereignty and freedom. Thomas Paine warned us against this in his pamphlet Common Sense when discussing the need for independence from Britain.

In today’s America, our allies have not shifted in decades and some of the closest allies retain powers over our nation that are not easily shaken. These powers have continued to divide us, weakening patriotism and love for neighbor.

In closing, Washington said it best in his farewell address. He warned us about permanent entanglements with nations, nations that may seem benign in their objectives, but underneath work solely to push their own schemes above the interests of the United States. He spoke,

“Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances, with any portion of the foreign world—So far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it—for let me not be understood as capable of patronising infidility to existing engagements. (I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy). I repeat it therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.” ( Farewell Address)

In other words, to have permanent alliances is to ravage republicanism, freedom, and sovereignty. It pits citizens against each other and enfeebles true patriotism as interests are beholden to each faction and to a preferred foreign interest, rather than to a United States of duty-bound countrymen and women to one another. 

References:

Campbell, Wesley J. “The Origin of Citizen Genet’s Projected Attack on Spanish Louisiana: A Case Study in Girondin Politics”, 2010, 33 French Hist. Stud. 515. URL: "The Origin of Citizen Genet’s Projected Attack on Spanish Louisiana: A" by Jud Campbell

"Enclosure: Edmond Charles Genet's Address to Louisiana, 27 August 1793," Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-26-02-0704. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 26, 11 May–31 August 1793, ed. John Catanzariti. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 773–774.]

“Farewell Address, 19 September 1796,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-20-02-0440-0002. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, vol. 20, 1 April–21 September 1796, ed. David R. Hoth and William M. Ferraro. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019, pp. 703–722.]

“Neutrality Proclamation, 22 April 1793,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-12-02-0371. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, vol. 12, 16 January 1793 – 31 May 1793, ed. Christine Sternberg Patrick and John C. Pinheiro. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005, pp. 472–474.]

Sioli, Marco. “Citizen Genêt and Political Struggle In the Early American Republic”. Revue Française d'Études Américaines, 1995, pp. 259-267, URL: Citizen Genêt and Political Struggle in the Early American Republic - Persée