George Washington's Farewell Address

A rhetorical device that frequently appears in formal arguments, syllogism is a form of logical reasoning that links two or more premises to draw a conclusion. The “Farewell Address” puts forth a series of logical propositions, each of which follows from the one before, leading the audience to an indisputable conclusion. Washington prefaces his letter with the remark that because he is an experienced public servant and is about to retire from public life, it follows that his words are valuable and trustworthy. He then commences his advice by discussing The Importance of National Unity, and once he believes he has made his point, the rest of the argument falls into place: Because national unity is vital and only the Constitution can safeguard national unity, violating the laws (or trying to “innovate” them) is harmful to national unity. In practice, this means that if citizens reject the Federalists’ legislative work, including the highly controversial Jay Treaty, they risk dividing and weakening the country.

A common rhetorical tactic is to reduce an issue to two sides, where one is obviously preferable and the other is indefensible. Washington’s “Farewell Address” deploys this tactic routinely by describing national unity, under the new federal government, as the source of all political good, while those who oppose it are wicked conspirators bent on sabotaging the nation’s security and prosperity. There were, at the time, serious dangers to national unity: Some Westerners had threatened secession or joining with Spain to access the Mississippi River and the lands beyond, and the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania was an armed challenge to federal authority. However, Washington appears to use these examples to frame all his political opposition as subversive, and he ignores the many nuances separating his and Hamilton’s Federalists from Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans.