On 19 September 1796, George Washington’s farewell message appeared in David C. Claypoole’s Philadelphia newspaper, the American Daily Advertiser. It was not a speech delivered before an assembly. The first president put it before the public in print.

The text announced that he would not stand for a third term. Voluntary retirement helped establish a tradition observed until the twentieth century. The constitutional two-term limit arrived only with the Twenty-second Amendment, after Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Washington argued for unity among the states and warned against regional rivalries, excessive party spirit and foreign interference in domestic affairs. The caution about “permanent alliances” is not the same thing as later isolationism, a label historians separate from the 1796 document.

The drafting had several layers. James Madison had worked on a version when Washington considered retiring in 1792. Alexander Hamilton played a major role in the 1796 form. Washington wrote the final copy, asked the cabinet for comments and watched the punctuation on the proofs.

The manuscript prepared for the printer remained, at Claypoole’s request, with the editor. Founders Online publishes the text with notes on variants. The newspaper date is 19 September; some copies carry 17 September, a dating difference rather than a change of political content.

In the United States Senate, the annual reading of the message has become an institutional tradition. That gesture does not turn the 1796 newspaper article into a platform oration. It remains a letter to “friends and fellow-citizens”.

The 230th anniversary is worth reading from the document, not from slogans. Peaceful transfer of power, cohesion and the risk of polarisation are the themes that endure; the rest is the context of an eight-year-old republic, not a foreign-policy programme for the twenty-first century.

Image: George Washington, Gilbert Stuart’s Lansdowne portrait / Wikimedia Commons. A studio painting, not the front page of the American Daily Advertiser. Cropped to 16:9.

Source consulted: Farewell Address, 19 September 1796 | Founders Online; Washington’s Farewell Address | U.S. Senate.