[Amezarak]

Washington was mad about political parties because his federalist-aligned coalition was collapsing. He resigned because of his declining health and because it was no longer obvious he could win if be ran again, and he feared the resulting reputational damage. There was extreme political contention at the time and Washington’s administration was becoming increasingly controversial. This very deeply bothered him, because he didn’t like opposition.

In the words of Thomas Paine: > Being now once more abroad in the world I began to find that I was not the only one who had conceived an unfavourable opinion of Mr. Washington. It was evident that his character was on the decline as well among Americans as among foreigners of different nations. From being the chief of a government, he had made himself the chief of a party; and his integrity was questioned, for his politics had a doubtful appearance.

This culminated in his federalist allies later criminalizing free speech and deporting dissidents under the Alien and Sedition Acts.

The farewell address was an explicitly political speech and you should read it in its historical context. You wouldn’t read Bush, Obama, or Trump speeches and take them at face value. Don’t read past ones at face value.

[jaybrendansmith]

That's an interesting take. Washington did not support the federalists in all things, in fact he likely prevented most of their extremist actions while he was in power. The citizen Genet affair had concerned him greatly, because Jefferson had invited the French in against the wishes of the state department. Sort of like Trump cozying up to dictators like Putin now, he worried about people putting faction over country, or putting themselves over the constitution. Your disapproval of Washington does explain a lot to me about how we've gotten to our current point, and tells me that he was not wrong to worry.

[Amezarak]

It was a coalition and Washington was certainly one of them. The Jay treaty was a defining moment in party identification.

If you read the letters I linked, I think you’ll find that my comment was fairly apropos - as in the Rush letter, you’re leveraging an idea of Washington they deliberately falsified. And of course a lot of the controversy was over the Constitution! (see the Paine letter I linked in the thread). Washington was a nakedly political animal and anyone that disagreed with him got labeled a factionalist, and anti federalist, etc. complaining about political parties was just his dressed up language for complaining about dissent.

[jaybrendansmith]

Yes, politics was a blood sport back then for sure. Both sides absolutely hated each other, the Federalists were trying to rebuild the British federalist system (sneak peek: they were proven correct by history) and the Democratic-Republicans wanted to maintain the southern slave economy. Washington was attempting to maintain the coalition in any way possible ... a hoop for 13 staves. He recognized how Adams and Hamilton were just as bad as Jefferson and Madison, but he sided with them because he recognized they were ultimately correct. (And have been proven by 250 years of history to have been correct. Without federalism we have no modern banking, we have no strong federal government. We have no industrial economy. Fun fact, without it, we lose to the Axis powers! Why we continue to debate this is completely beyond me.) Yes, Washington was sometimes imperfect, because he had to make tough choices, like keeping us out of the French revolution. And remember that ultimately Hamilton supported Jefferson over Aaron Burr, that villain.

[Amezarak]

> He recognized how Adams and Hamilton were just as bad as Jefferson and Madison, but he sided with them because he recognized they were ultimately correct.

This would be a stronger argument if you had letters or direct quotes by him making statements like this. Meanwhile, Adams was shilling for Washington to be addressed as "His Majesty", not the kind of argument you make for someone you're not strongly backing.

> Fun fact, without it, we lose to the Axis powers!

This is a bizarre argument, as if the justification for the federalist side is a war happening one hundred years later, and which the US had no particular national-interest reason to involve itself in. (The Japanese would have not attacked Pearl Harbor without American interventionism in the Asian-Pacific.) It's impossible to say what US politics would have looked like if the antifederalists had won sooner (the federalist party totally collapsed after Jefferson was elected) so I have no idea what the basis for this counterfactual is anyway.

[jaybrendansmith]

I find your anti-Washington takes equally bizarre, to be honest. I've read the biographies of most of the founding fathers, and in none of them does anyone strike out against the great man himself. Adams had his own problems, and Washington was very much not on board with the idea of a king, and explicitly told Adams to call him "Mr. President".

[Amezarak]

The letters I linked in this thread are an interesting place to get started: Benjamin Rush to John Adams: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-5755

Thomas Paine to George Washington: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-20-02-...

Another good source would be the newspapers from the time: the Philadelphia Aurora had a good for the circulation of the time, was a "respected" paper (as far as that went then), and has lots of very nasty things to say about Washington during his presidency. It (and a selection of other papers) will give you a vastly better idea of the political climate than just about anything else you can get.

You can see a wide swath of people who knew Washington thought very poorly of him, especially militarily.

> I've read the biographies of most of the founding fathers, and in none of them does anyone strike out against the great man himself.

Reading biographies is better than nothing, but they usually have an agenda. Not that say, Paine or Rush didn't, but we're talking about how Washington was view among his contemporaries and how the speech was received and understood at the time. Later works are going to be clouded with different agendas, particularly the mythologization I mentioned.