He warned excessive partisan rivalry, pretended patriotism and foreign intrigue would break our fragile democracy.
He warned excessive partisan rivalry, pretended patriotism and foreign intrigue would break our fragile democracy.
In 1796 our Founding Father and our 1st President decided to not seek a 3rd term, in part due to politics, writing to John Trumbull, "with art, and sophistry, which regard neither truth nor decency; attacking every character, without respect to persons – Public or Private, – who happen to differ from themselves in Politics." On September 19th of that year, he published a Farewell Address to the Citizens of this young country warning the effects of political parties and urging Americans to always place the interests of our nation over their political and regional affiliations. His Farewell Address predicted many of the events our country would face as a result of excessive partisanship, yet many citizens continue to ignore his warnings with blind adherence to a particular party, faction or person.
"In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views."
George Washington's Farewell Address, 1796
"As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion...
And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity..."
George Washington's Farewell Address, 1796
"It [Political Parties] serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection."
George Washington's Farewell Address, 1796
[Political Parties]…"are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
George Washington's Farewell Address, 1796
