Addressing America: George Washington’s Farewell and the Making of National Culture, Politics, and Diplomacy, 1796–1852 by Jeffrey J. Malanson (review)

George Washington is remembered by most Americans as a brilliant military leader, a wise president, and an honest gentleman planter who was the chief architect of American independence before providing the young republic with pivotal leadership during its infancy. Yet American memory and perception of Washington has been far from static, with subsequent generations left to draw new and sometimes conflicting lessons from the life of the first president.

Addressing America: George Washington’s Farewell and the Making of National Culture, Politics, and Diplomacy, 1796–1852, by Jeffrey J. Malanson, tackles questions of memory and legacy by examining how politicians and the public interpreted and were influenced by Washington’s famous Farewell Address. Remembered best for the warning against “entangling alliances,” the Farewell Address cast a long shadow over American political culture and foreign policy debates through the middle of the nineteenth century (p. 3). More specifically, Malanson contends that the address provided much of the bedrock on which early national American foreign policy was built. However, the half century after Washington’s death was a time of rapid change in which the young republic frequently found its fortunes at home and abroad to be in flux. This flux necessitated a balancing act between, on one hand, demonstrating appropriate respect for one of early America’s “sacred” yet essentially isolationist texts and, on the other hand, responding to new foreign policy challenges and geopolitical realities that Washington could not have foreseen (p. 4). Malanson seeks to analyze this tension over time and to assess how the Farewell Address influenced antebellum American foreign policy and political culture.

Malanson’s argument unfolds over the course of 181 brisk pages of text that are divided into six chapters. Based on archival research in published governmental documents, newspapers, pamphlets, organizational records, and personal papers, Addressing Americabegins with an examination of the Farewell Address’s origins. Next, Malanson turns to Thomas Jefferson and his era. Here the author asserts that both public and political perceptions of the Farewell Address were forever altered by Jefferson’s emphasis on the warning about entangled alliances and the rise of benevolent societies devoted to enshrining the legacy of Washington. Chapter 3 focuses on the foreign policy thought of John Quincy Adams during his tenure as both secretary of state and president. Malanson contends that Adams felt compelled to alter many of Washington’s fundamental principles in response to a changing geopolitical landscape in both Europe and the Americas. Central to this discussion is the Monroe Doctrine, which, according to Malanson, evoked strong emotions from those who advocated a foreign policy inspired by the Farewell Address and those who favored a more assertive American presence abroad. These tensions came to a head in 1826 during debates surrounding American participation in the Congress of Panama, the subject of chapter 4. Chapter 5 examines the role that the Farewell Address played in growing sectional tensions as well as the document’s impact on debates surrounding foreign policy and the war with Mexico. The concluding chapter is an extended discussion of Louis Kossuth’s tour of the United States during 1851 and 1852.

By the end of Addressing America, it is clear that the Farewell Address played a role in shaping early American political culture and foreign policy debates. However, it is somewhat less clear exactly when various actors really were grappling directly with the Farewell Address’s legacy rather than merely debating an array of foreign policy topics. Nonetheless, Addressing Americais an interesting contribution to the history of nineteenth-century American foreign policy.