Like the famed Cincinnatus, who left his plow in the field to save Rome and then returned to it, George Washington voluntarily relinquished power and returned to his beloved Mount Vernon, not once but twice. The first time he did it, giving up his commission at the end of the American Revolution, King George III is said to have exclaimed, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.” The second time he did it, upon serving two terms as president and refusing a third, He left us a timeless message.
Like Lincoln, Washington had very little formal education. He was an autodidact (self-educated). As we go through some of his remarks and absorb his eloquence, let them inspire us to become immersed in the philosophy and principles of our founding, since our survival as a nation may one day depend upon it. For, as he pointed out in that Farewell Address, “In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.”
It is true that this address, as is often said, advised against foreign entanglements, but it offers far more advice for a brand-new republic, founded not upon blood and soil but upon ideals, to preserve itself and prosper.
In it, Washington calls us to union, not just by state or by region, but with one another as Americans. We are to always be:
…indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link the various parts.
For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens by birth or by choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.
The survival of our liberty hinges upon this unity: “In this sense it is, that you Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that love of the one ought to endear you to the preservation of the other.”
Washington was convinced that divine providence had secured our revolution against the most powerful empire on the face of the earth. His continued prayer for our new nation was thus: “I shall carry it with me to my grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that Heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its beneficence; that your Union and brotherly affection may be perpetual; that the free constitution, which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained; that its administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue…”
From whence would this wisdom and virtue arise? From faith in that Divine Providence, and the commands that faith would entail: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would the man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.”
The identity politics, the attempts at racial, class, or other divisions among us, the cacophony of sordid emotional rants unhinged from any of our founding principles, would have disgusted and disheartened the man we should always proclaim to be “…first in the hearts of his countrymen.”
We CAN do better, and we MUST.
The last verse of our national anthem is seldom sung or even remembered, but it deserves to be:
O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto – “In God is our trust,”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
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