our lineup also includes inaugural ceremonies with franklin roosevelt and ronald reagan. watch tonight beginning at 8:00 eastern and enjoy american history tv every weekend on cspan3. you're watching american history tv. every weekend on cspan3 explore our nation's past. american history tv on cspan3 created by america's cable television companies. we're brought to you by these television companies who provide as a service. up next on american history tv from the national constitution center in philadelphia, john avlon editor in chief of "daily beast" discusses his book with scholar in residence michael gerhardt he argues that president washington warned future generations about

the dangers of hyperpartisanship, excessive debt and foreign wars. this is about an hour. we are enormously fortunate today to have as our guest john avlon editor in chief of "daily beast" and cnn political analyst and he is here today to discuss his new book which is entitled "washington's farewell the founding fathers warning to future generations" which has already been praised as a fantastic contribution to our natural literature. john will be with us afterwards for a book sale and signing of his book directly following our program. so, please join me today in welcoming our wonderful guest john avlon. >> thank you. an honor to be here. >> it is a great thing to be talking about george washington. always a great thing to be talking about -- >> never enough time to talk about george. >> which itself tells us a lot.

so, john, how did you get interested in the project and why is it of interest today to be thinking about washington's farewell address? >> imagine if the first founding father, george washington, sat down with alexander hamilton and james madison and wrote a memo to future generations, to us. specifically about the forces he feared could destroy our democratic republic. rooted in the lessons of his life and his understanding of history. he did. that's the farewell address. and he wrote it just a block from here in what was then the philadelphia executive mansion on the corner of what is now market and six lth street. he wrote it over a period of years as the auto biography of his ideas and the sum total of his hard one wisdom drawing on all the aspects of his life. as a soldier, as a surveyor, as a farmer, as a statesman.

and washington doesn't always get the respect he deserves as a thinker, as a man of great wisdom and he wasn't the most brilliant of the founding fathers. he wasn't, you know, a shining wit. he was enormously insecure about his own capacities to serve as president. as opposed to the great confidence he felt in himself as a general, as a farmer. but he really did cultivate his character consciously in an attempt to create the national character and the farewell address is an enormous gift and it was understood as such for a long time. more widely reprinted than the declaration of independence. it was that foundational. consulted by presidents and statesmen at pivotal moments in our history as a lens through which to guide and judge their own decisions. almost forgotten is itself a

great opportunity for us to rediscover it at a pretty pivotal moment when a lot of folks are thinking about america as a civilization perhaps for the first time and trying to understand the larger forces of history that we sometimes recklessly play with and understand it as part of our birth right. this whole center is devoted to that and the city is devoted to that but recognizing we the people have responsibilities as citizens to understand our history, to apply that to the present so that we can pass it on to the future. that farewell address is an inspiring document that consciously aspires to do just that and durable wisdom and that's why it was such an honor to write the book and to have it get such a great reception. >> well, we're going to get into the real substance of the address in a moment. i want to put it into some context first. >> sure. >> maybe a good place to begin doing that is with recognizing that this isn't the first farewell address he gave. giving farewell addresses was something washington, i wouldn't

say he liked to do, but something he had thought about before. >> he had a genius for good-byes. he understood and i think it's a measure both of his innate modesty and his understanding of politics that he knew that absence could be a higher form of presence. he knew the person who is being pursued is always more desirable than the person doing the pursuing. and washington's first farewell address was when he resigned his commission as commander of the continental army. you have to understand that in a life full of firsts, this was really the first decisive moment and it was famous in its time. george iii in england allegedly said when being confront would the fact that washington was about to resign his commission and go into private life like since nates. if he does that, he will be the

greatest man in the world because that was not the pattern. the pattern that history had provided over and over again is that the young rebellious leader would rise up against a tyrant and topple the king and then become a tyrant himself. that was the pattern of history, almost sort of written into fairytale. george washington consciously and against the advice of a lot of folks during that enormous discord after winning the war, when there's an attempted coup, a muiny of his officers people are trying to get him to take control and become the new king, he steps off the stage. when he does that, he's stationed in newburg, new york, a fascinating hamlet on the hudson near newpoint and his headquarters at the end of the revolutionary war still stand. among america's first historically designated station but it has a wonderful history

and i recommend everybody visit it. a kind of place we need to revive and rebuild. washington writes in that space in this little squat stone house his farewell address to the nation and doesn't do it with any ghostwriters. he cut his own quills. he was a vunuminous writer of letters. a letter sent to the state ledge slarts of all states. you may be celebrating, and that's great. but this is a time of great peril and crisis. now it falls to us to show that we can govern ourselves and every other nation in the world is waiting for us to fail. all the cold colonel powers and we have all the advantages of geography. he spoke a lot about geography as a soldier and a farmer often does about our great advantage of being separated by an ocean

and being blessed by beautiful soil and climate. but that it was going to be up to us to hang together because, remember, another bit of inherited wisdom was that no democracy could exist on a scale such as ours. writers had said that maybe democracy could exist in a swiss canton but never 13 colonies along such a long period of land. and this was there for a responsibility that american citizens had and their representatives to show that we could succeed as a republic. to do that, we had to find extensive common purpose and focus on national unity, already washington new the continental congress had been hopelessly divided. they couldn't get their act together with funding or find any sense of common purpose. they needed to really focus on the responsibilities of a civic people to be invested in the success of society and use education and religion as a way of binding the nation together. he talked about the importance

of paying your debts, whether it was on the federal level, the state level or crucially at that time to the soldiers and the pensioners. because that was a great source of pain that was leading to a sense of dissension. already you saw washington laying out markers a commitment to national unity, a focus on building national character. an idea that education and religion could help that and paying down debts was important and also containing what we would call hyperpartisanship and they called faction. all that core wisdom was there in washington. he also recommended strongly that we have an independent executive, which they didn't listen to during the articles of confederation and, of course, eventually become washington's to enact that recommendation. but then he left the stage. and that first farewell was called his farewell for a long time. that was almost as famous as his farewell address but it preidated his presidency. and that was a crucially important document that itself

was largely forgotten but it establishes crucially that the farewell address are washington's ideas. these are not, you know, hamilton ghostwriting. that he was a man of deep ideas rooted in his experience of history and you get that continuity clearly from his first farewell. >> of course, once he's become president and this is discussed in this wonderful book, by the way, which i wish we could go through page by page, but we're not going to quite be able to do that. once he gets in a sense brought back on to the stage, he understands something he has to do as president, which you talk a lot about in your book, set a series of precedents. this will become a precedent and before we get to that, what are some of the other precedents he tries to set as he moves through the first and second term? >> what's so fascinating is to

do that close focus at the early days of the government. because when you think about it as carefully written as the constitution was, as much of a master piece of principled compromise as it was and is and why places like this are invaluable to our civic education, it's essentially a framework. what you fill it with was largely up to the president andx the congress to create those precedents. o>$ñstáhp &hc% and the first congress in lower manhattan and i'm proudly, you know, from new york city with a joint, dual citizenship with charleston, south carolina, as times. in those cramped city streets where there is not the kind of markers of history as exist in philadelphia because new york is a place that reinvents itself. you had the first congress take place in federal hall. that building sadly no longer exists. and they're making it up essentially as they go along. they're debating how much the president should be considered a

king. john adams considers an elevated title. the city of new york kind of ponies up to spruce up their city hall to make it appropriate for a congress. the congressional library, i think, fascinating the most popular book at the congressional library in that first congress is decline and fall of the roman empire. which shows how much the president of ancient greek and roman history was on their minds. they were consciously both in writing the constitution and trying to set up those precedents trying to learn the lessons of history so they didn't follow the path of all the failed republics before them. john adams said there hasn't been a democracy that didn't commit suicide. all of this is very much in their minds and an enormous amount of griping of ineffectiveness of congress and an enormous amount of frustration of the partisanship and the faction creating deadlocks. obviously focused on supporting the bill of rights. this is before their political parties, folks. and washington himself is proudly not a member of a political party.

he is an independent. as a matter of principle. what is also fascinating about that first party is first of all the founders assumed that the balance of power set up would be enough of a balance and that people's constituencies and personal beliefs would itself provide enough of a basis of a debate, that you wouldn't need parties, per se, as we conceive them. the other thing is that even going back to the constitutional debate that is certainly evident in those early congresses, there's a natural cleaving into two very recognizable groups. folks from more rural areas are tremendously concerned about the overreach of federal power. they oppose the ratification of the constitution as a result. because they felt that growth of federal power would impinge upon their freedom and their way of life. then there are folks who favor a much stronger central government who tend to come from cities.

and that division is obviously deeply reminiscent of democrats and republicans today. red states, blue states. i think it blahs the fact that really the divide is between urban and rural. and i think crucially washington sees himself as someone who can try to bridge that divide because he recognizes that people on both sides, even though he's decidedly on the side of the stronger central government, he recognizes that both groups believe they're fighting for freedom. and he really does want to bridge that. already civil war's a real responsibility, and washington's trying to stop the growth of political parties. it puts him in enormous pain to see his most talented surrogate sons scheme to create political parties under his nose through dueling partisan newspapers, by the way, which is a fascinating story. so, washington is so conscious of the precedent. he's tight with madison. then madison falls out with him when he really throws all in

with jefferson. and washington is trying to keep this little our republican example and not have the office be too high-falutin. at the same time he's a man of enormous, he's very self-monitoring. he has that distance that he conflated with dignity of a soldier. so that made him very unapproachable by design. that's one of the reasons he is not as warmly beloved as say lincoln is today. but to see these folks as they were and as they say themselves or as close as we can get to understand them on a human scale makes the whole thing infinitely more fascinating. we put the founding fathers on a pedestal, we lose so much because we make their wisdom so much less accessible. we understand them as flawed people. in pain, fighting amongst themselves, full of doubts as to whether they could succeed. it makes the whole exercise of reading history so much more accessible, and i think much more inspiring.

>> and of course as he's moving through the presidency, he's overseeing crises, you mentioned he's seeing in a sense but can't stop it, the formation of political parties. and one of the things that's happening of course is he's trying to get out. >> yeah. >> he's succeeding, but at the same time he wants to leave. and you mentioned even near the beginning he's already thinking of his farewell address at the end of his first term. so what happens? >> yeah, it's fascinating. he's a genuinely reluctant president. we are very used to that pose in politics. it's the politicians always going, oh, no, no. [ laughter ] and they're trying to set that up. washington genuinely was a reluctant president. and the only thing jefferson and hamilton could agree on was at the end of his first term that as washington retired the nation would generate into civil war. we were not strong enough to

sustain the absence of a figure like washington who of course presided over the constitutional convention, who presided over the military and had a unique status as being above party as a unifying figure. he had that authority that none of the others did. even as we believe the founding fathers all seem like johns today, and certainly their work is inspired and the al chem of the individuals is fascinating. they were seen as factions. and washington was not. the federalist party really forms around washington. he is not part of it. so, washington, at the end of his first term, he is exhausted, he's frustrated. he doesn't necessarily feel this job comports to his strengths. he really wants to go home to mount vernon. god knows martha wants him too. she doesn't even show up at the

first inauguration. she already lost him to the time of the revolution. and now she's going to lose him to politics. he begins work on his first farewell address with james madison who plays a really interesting local -- role where he is both a leader of congress and washington's chief legislative and lyrical aid, in effect. so he's writing congressional statements and then the president's response and vice versa. he's playing a fascinating role. washington confesses to him that he wants to retire. madison tries to talk him out of it. washington hears him, says, you know, i appreciate it but i'm out of here. what's the best time, what's the beast means? madison says you should publish it in a newspaper, which he eventually does. and then basically a number of things occur. madison submits a draft. and the real dramas of washington's term mostly occur in the second term. and basically washington becomes

persuaded that if he leaves, the country could degenerate into civil war. he becomes very aware that madison and jefferson have been attacking his administration through newspaper here in philadelphia, "the national gazette." he feels enormously. jefferson of course lies to his face when confronted about it. and when he confronts hamilton about it, he cops to it because he's defending the administration. and he backs off the idea, doesn't formally announce it, but the cabinet can sleep easy when he finally gives up the idea. and then he puts madison's draft on the shelf or in his top desk. and doesn't consult it again until really the spring of february 1796. >> so we're going to move to that period at this point where he's now in a position where he's not going to be persuaded to say. he is prepared to leave.

but he also perceives that there's a value in this farewell address. so, i'm curious to know why he is so determined to put this into form. and at the same time consult with people whom he knows don't get along. he's consulting with hamilton and madison. so it's really sort of a double question to some extent. >> i think partly he is consciously trying to build a document beyond faction, beyond parties. he's trying to create a document very consciously that can unite the nation. that, really, if you want to distill washington's wisdom, he's very focused on us becoming an independent nation. it's a phrase he uses a lot. it's partly how i came to the book. my first title was "independent nation,". but the deeper wisdom was this that our independence as a

nation is inseparable from our interdependence as a people. that's the core wisdom. and he's entirely focused on national unity. on creating a national character. and doing it through education, through religion, through policy prescriptions. and that's what he chooses to do in the farewell. he brings together the greatest team of ghostwriters in history. madison does the first draft. hamilton does the second. and they play office politics on who can share the lion's share of credits for the words, not the ideas. and then he brings in john j. at the very end. to your point he gets back together the brand of brothers who does the federalist papers. john j. had left being chief justice of the supreme court to become governor of new york. and there's a wonderful moment we found out sort of where hamilton and j. did the final edit before sending it back to washington.

it's july of 1796. and jay is sort of the elder pair of eyes. washington really trusted jay's advice. he and hamilton had a complicated relationship. it was a little bit father/son. they were both hot-headed, they could both get angry. and hamilton had a harder time doing that because he felt he didn't have any advantages and was really struggling. and the musical, i hope you all have seen it, but the song "one last time" is about the composition of the farewell address. we'll get to that. the important precedent also is this. it's not just that he sets the two-term tradition and leaves power, which, by the way, was also not a given. there was an assumption by some folks that presidents can stay in office forever. that would have been perfectly logical. some kind of compromise between monarchy and a republic. he sets the two-term precedent, which then becomes part of the unwritten constitution until fdr

violates it and then we get an amendment. and crucially also he decides to make the farewell address something that is carried on and carried forward by the power of his example. he could have easily done just a quick victory lap and said look at all the great things i've done, lest nobody forget all this accomplishments, the country's stronger, more economically and militarily than it was before. but he doesn't do that. he specifically writes it as a warningfiçmox about the forces e believed could destroy our democratic republic. mñ9t ratic republic. forward in almost every major farewell address, most famously eisenhower's farewell address which warns of the military-industrial complex. and warns about threats to our democracy. but washington was really focused on paying it forward. and that's why he took such

care. he's writing and re-writing the document. and the new york public library has the draft. and you can see the minute line edits. in a former life i was a speech writer for the new york city mayor rudy giuliani. so i get the process and i'm fascinated by it. and you see the line edits washington's making. and they're minute. he's clearly writing because he's aware that posterity's going to judge it. and so he wants to avoid it to the best he can any misinterpretation. but he is clearly writing for future generations. he's writing for us, and he's writing about the big topics. they're rooted in his own experience. you see the frustrations of the french attacking him over the policy of neutrality. you can see all the policies that we can get into in greater depth. but the fact he writes the farewell address as a warning is one of his great gifts and it's one that gets carried forward. >> well, great speech requires, in essence, a great outlet.

and he chooses this local paper. how does he end up settling on the place that he does end up choosing as the place to publish it? >> the so this is kind of fun. he chooses the american daily advertiser, which is one of several papers on what was then high street, what is now market street in philadelphia. and basically with madison, the model for this to the extent there was a model was a european king bidding good-bye to an assembled parliament or legislature or house of lords. madison suggests that he disseminates it in a newspaper because it's more little r republican. it doesn't have monarchical trappings. and there are a hundred newspapers at the same time, that it would disseminate organically. and it took months for it to get to vermont and kentucky. so, when hamilton is doing the

major edits and advice and they're corresponding between new york because hamilton is retired from the treasury at this point, comes down occasionally to argue cases in front of the supreme court, which is kind of fascinating in upon itself. washington asks his advice, what newspaper. and he suggests dunlop's american advertiser. a couple problems with this. dunlop had sold the paper. it was now a guy named david claypool who had been his assistant. the federalists had a perfectly dependable pro-administration newspaper they could have given it to. and that would have made a lot of sense. in the broad and different papers picked up the mantle at different times. but you would have places like the american aurora run by benjamin franklin's grandson, which is brutally attacking the administration over accusations of monarchy, et cetera. and then you had papers attacking jefferson and madison and the democratic republican

party. and that would have made sense, right? give it to a partisan newspaper that's on your side. washington didn't want to do that because he explicitly was trying to send a mention to the nation beyond party. and the american daily advertiser was uniquely committed to that more independent perspective. now, a cynic would say that the reason for that was that they had a lot of congressional publishing contracts going back to the declaration, and therefore it didn't make sense to throw in with one faction or another. but i think there was a genuine philosophical point of view that that's where they felt a paper should be. independence is key to the integrity of a news brand. the point is we've always had partisan papers. we've always also had folks who have tried to rise above the fray, who believe that that was closer to their mission as journalists. and david claypool felt that. so claypool, washington sends out to walk five blocks from the executive mansion just down the road. and all the papers are located

all next to each other and they hate each other's guts. [ laughter ] he sends out his top aid to bring a note down to david claypool and say the president would like to meet with you. claypool comes over, meets in the second floor of the executive mansion on these sort of angled sofas on the fireplace. and incidentally, washington always kept a framed portrait of king louis of france on the wall even after he had been beheaded in the french revolution. this was a rebuke to hamilton and madison for falling in love with the french revolution. and he basically delivers the greatest scoop in american history to david claypool. he says i'm going to retire, i'm writing a message, i'd like you to publish it. claypool is of course over the moon. and at that point the things had been written for five years, but things go very quickly over a period of around five days. and it's roughly the ninth

anniversary of the signing of the constitution just in the shadow of independence hall. washington gets a draft, it's typeset, washington makes final very minute edits. but he's very hands-on about the edits. and he's rewritten the entire thing into his own hand, which is witnessed by his step granddaughter. claypool comes over with the final proof to say thank you. they decide they're going to publish it, there's no weekend edition. they're going to wait, it's an afternoon paper, i think it costs 6 cents. claypool returns the document and he expresses real reluctance to part with it. washington sort of very oddly for him impetuously says, fine, you can keep it. and washington keeps his documents meticulously at mount vernon. like he knows that this matters to history. he rewrites old letters sometimes. that's how much, you know. but he gives the original document to claypool who then sits on it, refuses to sell it, and it's believed to be lost for

a long period of time. but that morning washington leaves philadelphia, september 19th, 1796. he leaves that morning with martha and a green parrot to go to mount vernon. and that afternoon the paper hits the streets, and the news explodes. it's republished in papers in philadelphia, then new york. it passes along. and washington in that really just fascinating way in his diary says almost nothing. went home to mount vernon, announced resignation in the american daily advertiser. that's it. [ laughter ] of course now we're here. we're at the speech itself. and i would ask you to get up and deliver it, but i know -- [ laughter ] we're going to save that for later. but share some of the substance with us. it has six pillars, so to speak, in it, which are obviously withstood the test of time.

i describe them as pillars of liberty because that's a phrase washington and the founders used a lot. and i think the word liberty is worth unpacking just a little bit to understand why washington was focused on these core themes. we use the words independence and freedom and liberty essentially as interchangeable today. but i think to the founders there were crucial differences and distinctions. the founders, particularly washington who was always focused on responsibility, the responsibility that comes with freedom. he understood, they understood that freedom could be a state of nature. but liberty required responsibility that self-government was a job for a citizen that they needed to be invested in, that citizens needed to be invested into the success of a democratic republic for it to function. and so that idea of pillars of liberty, these were things that were holding up the edifice of our democratic republic.

washington, as i point out, pointed out these core dangers. and they were really rooted in their understanding of greek and roman history. and they were referred to in the constitutional debates and in the federalist papers. when washington's warning about the dangers of hyperpartisanship or what would be called the founders who've called faction, that's -- madison's obsessed with addressing this in the federalist papers. because he talks about how ancient greek republics were torn apart by faction. and washington, in particular, really understands that when these self-interested factions hijack a democracy, and also by the way the english civil war is very much within living memory of the founding fathers and that frame doesn't always get the credit it deserves in terms of impacting their thinking and the writings of joseph addison to george washington in particular. fascinating figure. wrote his favorite play "plato." that it would create a very

deadlocked legislature that would create such frustration on the part of average citizens at the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of democracy, that it could open the door to a demagogue with authoritarian ambitions. washington and the founders were acutely aware of that pattern in human history. and they wanted to counteract it as best they could. they could do it institutionally to some extent, but they also needed to leave by the example of strength. excessive debt was also a major danger, something that i think is more associated with the conservative side of the aisle as a focus, although when our conservative friends sometimes take control of the legislature, they seem to forget it when it comes to actually passing a bill on such measures.

and therefore, and washington and hamilton experienced that danger, especially during the revolution because the continental congress couldn't summon the political will to raise money to pay for soldiers, not just their pay, but bullets, shoes, basic stuff. and the british tried to use inflation as a weapon to devalue local currency. so washington and robert morris, local who was ultimately imprisoned, washington visited him in prison, but he was really the genius of the american finance system as much as alexander hamilton. washington really grew to understand the importance of a degree of set in funding a society but that excessive debt could topple an empire, in part, because it violated the precept of generational responsibility. you should pay your own debts and not pass them on to the next generation. and finally foreign wars and foreign entanglements. folks know the farewell address today, they probably know the phrase entangling alliances which doesn't appear in the

farewell address. that appears in jefferson's first inaugural, which basically rearticulates washington's farewell advice after jefferson has spent his domestic political career. but, you know, keep in mind that washington as a young soldier gets involved in the first skirmish that starts not only the french and indian wars in america but the seven years war in europe. the dangers of these sort of interconnected fates are very clear to him. and one of the great blessings of the united states is the atlantic ocean. and he's constantly saying don't throw in with these foreign powers. we will become a proxy, we will become a satellite, they willí■ never care about us and they never0jf$pi&÷ will. will rogers had a great line. he said no nation ever had a better friend than ours. you know who the two best

friends of the america was? the atlantic and the pacific ocean. and the tendency of foreign nations to try to meddle in the domestic affairs and elections of our own. and this too was something that the ancient greeks and romans had warned about. vladimir putin didn't make this up on his own, folks. in the federalist papers they referred to the fact that king phillip of macedon tried to cozy up to the greek city states and give them foreign donations and then buy off a couple of politicians and sow seeds of discords and then make the state so weak and divided that he could easily conquer it. even during washington's own time, poland creates the first constitutional monarchy. but the russians end up buying off members of parliament and basically get to poland to disasterously agree to a series of partitions that reduce it to a skeletal state between russia and prussia until it is easily

absorbed. but most viciously it's france. france sends an ambassador, the revolutionary government to foment rebellion against the administration to try to convince washington and his administration to back away from the proclamation neutrality of the washington issues in the latest war between france and england. and jefferson and madison are all in on the french side. there are riots in the street. john jay is burned in effigy. john adams actually calls for guns and weaponry to be brought to his house. because these folks are being fomented by the french, the country is inflamed. the birth of the partisan system is partly based around allegiance to the french revolution because washington's proclamation on neutrality is seen as a complete traitorous move against the french and is being seen as de facto pro-british. and hamilton was accused of trying to mimic the british

economic system. washington stood that we needed to walk a middle line between the monarchy and the mob. that we couldn't throw in with the british. and hamilton understood that anarchy was also the quickest path to tyranny. so he's really furious when he writes the farewell address about the attempt of the french to undermine the integrity of our system and his government. and that seemed like a distant concern when i wrote the book. but of course it's ripped out of the headlines today. and then i'll just say that while washington focused on warnings, he was too much a man of action to simply point out problems. so he pointed out very clearly in these pillars of liberty sources of strength that we should always focus on going forward. national unity. it's obvious now part of the danger of hyperpartisanship he warned was regional-based political parties that could lead to civil war. and he called those folks who would try to divide us as americans in political debates pretended patriots.

remember that. he talks about the importance of political moderation as a source of strength in a democracy, not weakness. not a mushy middle. but in fact a great tradition that's rooted in classical wisdom taken from the ancient greeks and romans. we've forgotten that as well that political moderation is christianity, he took grief from a local preacher for not taking communion and kneeling during prayer. but he really understood the

importance of religious pluralism and religious tolerance and religion in undergirding a self-governing society. religion was a great way of communicating morality and getting people to be ethical citizens. education, washington was the least educated founding father. because of that he was the most focused on education on a national level. he wanted to build a national university in washington where the vice president's house now stands. he actually donated money to that. he was so focused on it that hamilton kept trying to take it out of the farewell address, and washington kept putting it back. hamilton ultimately said save most of your verbiage of that for your farewell address to congress. so right now it's only one line, but it's fascinating. and washington's point is that enlightened upon is necessary to a self-governing society. the reason he wanted a national university also was to try to bridge the divides between states, to create a common culture and common character. and civic education, which this organization is devoted to is something that we need to take

much more seriously as a country. and finally the importance of a foreign policy of independence. washington's advice on foreign policy has been mischaracterized throughout the ages as enendorsement of isolationism. it's not. what he was focused on is a period of at least 20 years where we could build an economic and military strength so that we could be respected as an independent nation on the world stage and pursue our own interests and not confuse our own interests with that of another nation. so all these pillars of liberty that washington focuses on, national unity, he talks about citizens of birther choice, which is a beautiful phrase we should remember. all these pillars are things that were intended for us to focus on going forward. and they can unite us across our disparate political tribes still today. and it's just one of the fascinating gifts at the heart of this address. >> well, there's so many of those -- i mean, all the pillars of course still resonate with us. i want to come back to them in a

moment. >> sure. >> but several questions in the audience touch on something that's absent from the pillars. and that's any mention of slavery. >> yep. >> so, what do we make of that? >> the well, look, i mean, obviously slavery is the original sin in our society and in the constitution. as you will appreciate even the constitutional debates, the founders basically kicked the can. they basically said this is too contentious, we're not going to be able to get a constitution if we deal with this issue. washington's relationship with slavery is of course notoriously complex. and this is actually the subject of when i interviewed lin-manuel miranda who is the playwright in the play "hamilton." we talked at length about it. it's understandable but i think dangerous to view the founders solely through our contemporary lens. and lin-manuel miranda's point

was we need to embrace the contradiction that this is a man who speaks beautifully about freedom who owned other human beings. you need to confront that contradiction, can't ignore it. but then you need to transcend it. that's the sand in the oyster, he soid. and i do think that while washington sidesteps the question of slavery, because, remember, here too he's still trying to forestall the civil war. and the founders understood washington in particular that the fault lines of the north and south and slavery were the most likely lines for civil war. washington, as president, is a fascinating example. a conversation he has with attorney general randolph where he says if there's a civil war i'm going to go in with the north. he feels captive to its cruel economy in a way that seems sort of ironic today. but he understands it's a problem not only for the country

but for himself. and what's fascinating is, is that the coda to the farewell address is his last will and testament. and that's a point i make in the book a great deal. i think washington's last will and testament needs to be understood as the could edda to his farewell address. he releases his slaves upon his death and his wife martha's death. many of them he inherited. most of them he inherited from his wife martha and her first husband. now you can easily argue that's too little too late. but it's worth remembering first of all that he's consciously trying to send a message to the nation about the direction we need to move and the side of this debate he's truly on. that nine subsequent presidents owned slaves and bought slaves when they were in office and didn't release them at their death or at the end of their life. washington did. it was against the grain. and he was clearly sending a

message. and, again, understandable for folks to say it's too little too late. but he was writing for posterity even up until that last moment. and so i think he does deal with it belatedly outside the immediate text of the farewell. >> well, we've already started talking about something that of course that's a big focus in your book, and that is the afterlife of washington's farewell address. i want to touch on different aspects of that afterlife. it's no great surprise that every generation's going to want washington on their side also to harken back to lin-manuel miranda. but i want to see how the farewell address is fair in a sense through history. for example, during the civil war, what difference, what do they make of it during the civil war? >> this is fascinating to me, too, in particular because, again, the farewell address is almost a rumor to many of us today. the play "hamilton" is the first time it's gotten a real shoutout in a long time. you got to understand the

centrality it has. it was more widely reprinted than the independence. the farewell address is bantied about because washington in it warns us against secession and disyunt. andrew jackson's entire farewell address is basically a resume nation on washington's wisdom in the farewell address saying when washington wrote that we didn't know the constitution would work, we know it does now, don't be seduced by the claims of succession. daniel webster and other folks are arguing both sides of it. abraham lincoln uses a riff in the farewell address as part of his core 1860 stump speech justifying or defending the newly formed republican party against attacks. it's not a regional party, it's

a national party, and that this is a party of progress, which i think is sometimes lost. and then during the civil war, the confederates try to claim washington as one of their own, too. you know, they say that washington was a southerner and a plantation owner and a slave owner and a rebel. ergo, he's one of us. there's a debate in the run-up of civil war about whether the farewell address should be bought because john david claypool finally kicks the can and his executors put it up for sale. and then mississippi senator says this is really a waste of federal dollars. and of course what he was trying to do is denigrate the message of the farewell. one of the reasons it's in6+s%; new york public library is it's bought by a private entity because congress was dissuaded

from trying it because it was seen asú:t8ñ profflugate at the time. to remind them for what they're fighting for. and after the civil war it becomes part of standard curriculum in american schools as a way of binding the nation's wounds. and there's amazing literature. there are all these contests that occur in the late 19th century which i've got examples of in the book where students would commit it to memory. they would win awards for oratory. this is a 6,000-word address and they're memorizing this. and this was a standard part of the curriculum. and the explicit point was is that maybe if we'd remembered the wisdom of washington's warning, we wouldn't have had the civil war. that's the idea. and it is a mainstay of debate right up and through world war i. and that's sort of the key pivotal moment. and what's fascinating is you've got a great debate around

america's involvement in world war i and the league of nations conducted by two washington biographers. woodrow wilson and henry cabot lodge. they are debating whether we should get involved in our first overseas war. it was a total violation of everything washington says. and what wilson tries to do is basically says, well, you know, the wisdom of washington's warning needs to be updated even if it's not totally outdated, that it's really about expanding freedom and securing freedom and we should be in that business as well. we need to be a good friend on the world stage, and makes that case. henry cabot lodge is arguing more sort of, you know, we have never done ourselves a disservice by following washington's wisdom and be very careful of ditching tradition. after the war it's about joining the league of nations.

obviously wilson wins that debate, by the way. and after the war, which the worst does not occur. america gets in and it's a relatively quick win. then it's the question of the league of nations. and henry cabot lodge & co says it's committing us to a potential war. but at that moment washington starts to seem less infallible because we had violated one of the clear presets. and the end did not come. in fact america seemed to be rising on the world stage. and even though there's a fascinating period after world war i where there's great doubts about why we got involved in the war and there's these senate commissions looking at who compelled us and was it in our real national interest. the farewell address and washington himself starts to take a ding. the gettysburg address rises in

prominence as a civic scripture. and the farewell address starts to fall out of favor. it's a fade. one of the most surreal moments that i think in the book surrounds the rise of a group called america first, which was a group of folks who informed by world war i brandished the legacy of washington and the farewell saying that we should not get involved in world war ii, and this is the late 1930s and 1940. this is charles lindbergh, henry ford, a pretty wide group of folks basically saying that that's not our fight. they use the farewell address as an argument for why we shouldn't get involved in a foreign war. and some of them are clearly motivated by anti-semitism. other folks just by saying that world war i was actually a mistake, let's not squander our advantage on the world stage. and this is where the farewell address starts to get ahead of being synonymous with isolationism, when iit never did. but there's a surreal dark

moment that i think is fascinating, that just to discover it itself was kind of stunning. in february 1939, there's a rally of the german-american bund at madison square garden. and it's 20,000 america nazis show up. and it's ostensibly about ethnic pride. but there's a 30-foot banner of washington flanked by swastikas. and the keynote speech is all about recasting and reappropriating the farewell address, saying that washington warned us against excessive debt and the new deal has been too free-spending. he warned us that we should focus on religion as the mainstay of our national identity. and he warned us foreign entanglements and being involved in foreign wars. now, what's fascinating about this odious misappropriation in

addition to just the photos look like an outtake from dark mirror of the twilight zone, is that of course washington warned against these exactly these kinds of pretend patriots who would manipulate his wisdom and the founding wisdom and argue that dividing the country was representing the founder's vision for the country when nothing could be further from the truth. and in particular the dangers of a foreign government trying to influence our own elections and our own internal decisions, and the german-american bund was eventually exposed as taking money from adolf hitler. but washington's farewell really takes a hit between world war i and that association with isolationists and anti-semites. and unfairly it starts to fall out of favor. it's briefly revived during the vietnam war when gary wills and other folks make a very high-minded argument for why involvement in vietnam is not consistent with the founding

father's vision for america while nixon and co was saying it did. johnson loves quoting it for education. reagan loves quoting it for religion. it was so central to american debates. and then it faded away. but that doesn't mean its wisdom is any less applicable. it's just a fascinating guide to how historical memory can ebb and flow. and these civic scriptures really retain their wisdom and we shouldn't accept that they're diminished by name. >> a couple of other questions from the audience also ask about the parallel between washington's farewell address and eisenhower. and you talk about this in the book. can you talk briefly about how eisenhower himself is influenced by it? >> i really was a washingtonian. he was a reluctant politician. he thought of himself as an independent. he really threw in with the republican party because he felt that one party ruled the

democrats and ruled since 1932 and it was bad for democracy. he was constantly at war. when his time for farewell address comes by, and i found some memos that hadn't been published before saying you should really go back and look at the farewell address again. he focuses deeply on it. and his warning is to -- that the military-industrial complex, although originally it was the congressional military-industrial complex. [ laughter ] and then he thought he would be alienating more people than he would attract. but the entire speech and much of eisenhower's career is focused on these same pillars of wisdom. the virtue of moderation. eisenhower was deeply focused on that. the importance of avoiding excessive debt, excessive generational responsibility. that distrust of hyperpartisanship, the focus on national unity, the focus on

civic education. and then identifying a new emerging threat that couldn't have been on washington's radar. that was his great gift. but the speech itself and much of the political career is based solely on the foundation of washington and washington's farewell. >> john, and our time is growing a little bit short here, and there's so many other things i want to touch on. one thing i'm sort of curious about is whether or not given our technological advancements we could even have something like the farewell address today. could we have some -- is it unique to washington himself? or is that special opportunity kind of lost? >> obviously you are dealing with a set of uniques, a precedent without precedent in a time when there wasn't fragmentation of our media and environment and that everything washington did had outside impact and he knew it. so, no, of course, a presidential address any kind of

message is not going to stand out in the same way, it's not going to have the same historical gravity. what i think we can do is to first of all recognize that we have those first principles articulated by the founding fathers, that they're not simply dusty old relics, but it's our responsibility as new generations of americans to dust them off and to make the old stories new again. because those principles don't age. principles are not rigid requirements. they're going to have different degrees of imapplicability at different times in our history. washington couldn't have foreseen the growth of technology that would shrink the distance of the ocean or would give rise to the military-industrial complex. but as we've seen, certainly his warnings about the dangers of hyperpartisanship, foreign powers trying to influence our domestic debates and elections and the dangers of excessive deficits and debt retain applicability. and i think that's what we

really need to focus on because washington is beyond partisan debates and because politics is the thing we have -- perspective is the thing we have least of in our politics. i think refocusing on washington and the other founding fathers is especially important for us right now, because it can recenter our debates, it can provide a sense of common ground and common purpose where very little is evident and that liberals and conservatives can find different bits of wisdom that comfort their own political faith and other places that can challenge it. and i think ultimately, we're living in a challenging time. this is a civic stress test. and more citizens recognizing, as washington did, that we the people are the backstop in a democracy. ultimately, there is no president by design of our system who can be expected to come save us. that we've got a balanced system, we've got checks and

balances and balanced power, but ultimately it's about we the people really guarding that gift that's been given to us from the founding fathers. and taking that responsibility seriously and understanding that i think it's probably time for a new generation of washingtonans to try to transcend the political divides, to focus on first principles in an inclusive way along these foundational lines. because this speech, we don't need a new farewell, we can focus on the original wisdom and then update it for a new generation. we can do that amazing thing washington did, consciously trying to bridge the past, the present, and the future. that's our responsibility as well. and we have this amazing rosetta stone from the first founding father. and its applicability is still relevant. it is timeless, but it is timely. and i would argue urgently timely. so this is a great time to re-discover the farewell address. and i think for a new generation

of washingtonans to rise up and try to recenter our politics, try to refocus on civic foundations and then move the country forward again, not left to right but forwardtñyóñ again. and that balance, the internal+@ wisdom of individual liberty and generational responsibility can really help focus our debates in a constructive way going forward. so we don't need a new farewell. i think we need to re-discover it and move it forward again. [ applause ] >> i know better than to try and do better than that. but i do want to remind you that john will be downstairs talking further about this wonderful book. and there's no greater place to be talking about civic education and constitutional history and to have a guest of such enormous quality. thank you for being with us. >> it's an honor to be here. thank you. [ applause ]

weeknights this month, we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span3. tonight on the eve of joe biden's swearing had, in as the nation's 46th president, we look at past presidential inaugurations beginning with john f. kennedy. our lineup also includes inaugural ceremonies with franklin roosevelt and ronald reagan. watch tonight beginning at 8:00 eastern and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span3. you're watching american history tv. every weekend on c-span3 explore our nation's past. american history tv on c-span3, created by america's cable television companies. and today we're brought to you by these television companies who provide american history tv to viewers as a public service.

♪♪ up next, president dwight eisenhower delivers his farewell address from the oval office on january 17, 1961. the speech is best remembered for the president's warning about the influence of what he called the military-industrial complex. dwight eisenhower served two terms as president from 1953 to 1961. three days from now, after half a century and the service of our country, i shall lay down the responsibilities of all of us as in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the precedency is vested in my succession. this evening, i've come to you with a message of leave taking and farewell and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.