{"id":853313,"date":"2026-09-19T14:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T14:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/853313\/"},"modified":"2026-09-19T14:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T14:18:13","slug":"george-washingtons-farewell-address-council-on-foreign-relations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/853313\/","title":{"rendered":"George Washington\u2019s Farewell Address | Council on Foreign Relations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today marks the 230th anniversary of one of the most consequential presidential statements in the history of U.S. foreign policy, \u201cThe Address of General Washington To The People of America on His Declining of the Presidency of the United States,\u201d or as it is better known, \u201cWashington\u2019s Farewell Address<\/a>.\u201d It was published, not delivered in person, on September 19, 1796 in the Philadelphia newspaper, the American Daily Advertiser. (Why a Philadelphia paper? Because Philadelphia was the nation\u2019s capital in 1796.) It best remembered for Washington\u2019s injunction that the United States should have \u201cas little political connection as possible\u201d with other countries.<\/p>\n

More than two centuries later, people across the political spectrum continue to invoke Washington\u2019s so-called Great Rule of Conduct as the guiding principle for U.S. engagement with the world. But Washington\u2019s address was less about laying down an unalterable foreign policy axiom than it was about shaping the debate over who should succeed him as president.<\/p>\n

\u201cSteer Clear of Permanent Alliances\u201d<\/p>\n

The Farewell Address summarized Washington\u2019s advice to the nation based on his more than four decades of public service. Much of what he wrote warned against the dangers of partisan and regional strife, a warning that is worth remembering today. But the address is best known for what Washington said about foreign policy, namely, that the United States should keep its distance from European affairs.<\/p>\n

The critical passage reads as follows:<\/p>\n

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.<\/p>\n

Proponents of a less interventionist or non-interventionist U.S. foreign policy have for more than two centuries invoked Washington\u2019s injunction that \u201cit is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world<\/p>\n

Advice for Today or All Time?<\/p>\n

That Washington warned of the perils of alliances is clear. But was he speaking to issues that consumed Americans of his day or providing advice that he thought Americans should follow for all time?<\/p>\n

The balance of evidence suggests that the answer is the former. Rather than speaking to Americans who had yet to be born and whose world he could not know, his main purpose with the address was, as Robert Kagan has written<\/a>, more \u201cimmediate and political\u201d: to defend his foreign policy record against his critics and to warn his fellow citizens against a specific foreign policy choice he thought would endanger the young republic.<\/p>\n

That foreign policy choice was support for France. The 1789 French Revolution had sent shockwaves through Europe by throwing into the question the right of the continent\u2019s monarchies to rule. In early 1793, the French Republic, having just executed King Louis XVI and anticipating a British attack, moved preemptively to declare war on Britian. Many Americans, notably Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, favored the French cause. They did so partly out of revolutionary solidarity and gratitude for the pivotal aid that France had provided the colonists during the American Revolution. But they also feared that siding with Britain would deepen America\u2019s economic dependence on its former colonial ruler and potentially encourage the return of monarchy to the United States. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Engraving depicting the execution of Louis XVI in the Place de la Concorde on January 21, 1793, by Isidore Stanislas Helman, 1794. National Library of France <\/p>\n

Washington and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, however, thought that siding with France would be disastrous for the United States. They disliked the radicalism of the French revolutionaries, and they believed that U.S. interests required maintaining good relations with Britain. It posed the far greater military threat to the United States; it was also the young country\u2019s main trading partner.<\/p>\n

The Neutrality Proclamation<\/p>\n

When news reached Philadelphia that Britain and France had gone to war, Washington declined to invoke the 1778 Treaty of Alliance with France<\/a>. He instead issued the Neutrality Proclamation<\/a>, which stated that the United States would \u201cwith sincerity and good faith adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impartial toward the belligerent powers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cGeorge Washington with Jefferson and Hamilton,\u201d by Constantino Brumidi, 1872. U.S. Senate Collection<\/p>\n

Proponents of siding with France lambasted Washington\u2019s decision on both procedural and substantive grounds<\/a>, accusing him of having exceeded his presidential authority and of making the wrong decision while doing so. Alienated by Washington\u2019s preference for Hamilton\u2019s advice, Jefferson resigned as secretary of state at the end of 1793. He and Madison spent the next several years working to undermine<\/a> Washington\u2019s presidency, and they encouraged their friends in the partisan press to accuse him<\/a> of harboring monarchical ambitions and having committed treason.<\/p>\n

Washington was deeply wounded<\/a> by the accusations, and he knew who was stoking them. When Martha Washington\u202flater called<\/a>\u202fJefferson \u201cmost detestable,\u201d she was likely reflecting her husband\u2019s assessment. Washington\u2019s anger at Madison, who had once been one of his closest aides, went even deeper. America\u2019s first president\u202frefused to speak to<\/a>\u202fhis former aide during the final three years of his life.<\/p>\n

Turnabout Is Fair Play<\/p>\n

Despite seeing his reputation besmirched because of his refusal to throw America\u2019s lot in with France, Washington refused to give ground. He told a political ally<\/a>, \u201cThe people of this Country it would seem, will never be satisfied until they become a department of France: It shall be my business to prevent it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Washington\u2019s view, fulfilling that goal meant keeping Jefferson from succeeding him as president. To that end, he and Hamilton crafted the Farewell Address and released it two months before the presidential electors met. They knew that everyone reading the address would grasp the subtext and know who it was aimed at. Releasing it just weeks before the election maximized the political damage done to the man from Monticello.<\/p>\n

\"\"Section of the United States Capitol House Wing\u2019s Cox Corridor, depicting the painting \u201cWashington\u2019s Farwell Address\u201d by Allyn Cox above the inscription \u201cThe Greatest Dangers to Liberty Lurk in the Insidious Encroachment by Men of Zeal.\u201d Architect of the Capitol <\/p>\n

There is another reason to think that Washington never intended the Farewell Address to be a perpetual directive for U.S. foreign policy. His first draft stated unequivocally that the United States must \u201cavoid connecting ourselves with the politics of any Nation.\u201d Hamilton persuaded him to soften the claim to have \u201cas little political connection as possible\u201d with other countries. This formulation left the door open to potential alliances as events might dictate. And in that slight tweak, Washington and Hamilton signaled that no successful foreign policy could rest on rigid rules but must marry the country\u2019s choices to the circumstances it faces.<\/p>\n

Oscar Berry and Jack Patton assisted in the preparation of this article.<\/p>\n

The United States celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2026. To mark that milestone, I am resurfacing essays I have written over the years about major events in U.S. foreign policy. A version of this essay was published on September 19, 2011<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today marks the 230th anniversary of one of the most consequential presidential statements in the history of U.S.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-853313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}