To George Washington from the U.S. House of Representatives, 16 December 1796
From the United States House of Representatives
December the 16th [1796]
Sir,
The House of Representatives have attended to your communication respecting the state of our Country, with all the sensibility that the contemplation of the subject, and a sense of duty can inspire.
We are gratified by the information, that measures calculated to ensure a continuance of the friendship of the Indians, and to maintain the tranquility of the Western frontier, have been adopted; and we indulge the hope that these, by impressing the Indian Tribes with more correct conceptions of the justice, as well as power of the United States, will be attended with success.
While we notice, with satisfaction, the steps that you have taken in pursuance of the late Treaties with several foreign Nations, the liberation of our Citizens, who were prisoners at Algiers, is a subject of peculiar felicitation. We shall cheerfully cooperate in any further measures that shall appear, on consideration, to be requisite.1
We have ever concurred with you in the most sincere and uniform disposition to preserve our neutral relations inviolate; and it is, of course, with anxiety and deep regret we hear, that any interruption of our harmony with the French Republic has occurred, for we feel with you and with our Constituents, the cordial and unabated wish to maintain a perfectly friendly understanding with that Nation. Your endeavours to fulfil that wish, and by all honorable means to preserve peace, and to restore that harmony and affection which have heretofore so happily subsisted between the French Republic and the United States, cannot fail, therefore, to interest our attention. And while we participate in the full reliance you have expressed on the patriotism, self-respect and fortitude of our Countrymen,2 we cherish the pleasing hope, that a mutual spirit of justice and moderation will ensure the success of your perseverance.
The various subjects of your communication will, respectively, meet with the attention that is due to their importance.
When we advert to the internal situation of the United States, we deem it equally natural and becoming to compare the present period with that immediately antecedent to the operation of the Government, and to contrast it with the calamities in which the state of War still involves several of the European Nations, as the reflections deduced from both tend to justify, as well as to excite, a warmer admiration of our free constitution, and to exalt our minds to a more fervent and grateful sense of piety towards Almighty God for the beneficence of his providence, by which its administration has been hitherto so remarkably distinguished.
And while we entertain a grateful conviction that Your wise, firm and patriotic Administration has been signally conducive to the success of the present form of Government,3 we cannot forbear to express the deep sensations of regret with which we contemplate your intended retirement from Office.
As no other suitable occasion may occur, we cannot suffer the present to pass without attempting to disclose some of the emotions which it cannot fail to awaken.
The gratitude and Admiration of Your Countrymen are still drawn to the recollection of those resplendent virtues and talents which were so eminently instrumental to the atchievement of the revolution, and of which that glorious event will ever be the memorial. Your obedience to the voice of duty and Your Country, when you quitted reluctantly, a second time, the retreat you had chosen, and first accepted the Presidency, afforded a new proof of the devotedness of Your zeal in its service, and an earnest of the patriotism and success which have characterized Your administration.4 As the grateful confidence of the Citizens in the virtues of their chief Magistrate, has essentially contributed to that success, we persuade ourselves that the millions whom we represent, participate with us in the anxious solicitude of the present occasion.
Yet we cannot be unmindful that your moderation and magnanimity, twice displayed by retiring from your exalted stations, afford examples no less rare and instructive to mankind, than valuable to a Republic.5
Although we are sensible that this event, of itself, completes the lustre of a character already conspicuously unrivalled by the coincidence of virtue, talents, success and public estimation; Yet we conceive we owe it to You, Sir, and still more emphatically to ourselves and to our nation, (of the language of whose hearts we presume to think ourselves, at this moment, the faithful interpreters) to express the sentiments with which it is contemplated.
The spectacle of a free and enlightened nation6 offering by its Representatives the tribute of unfeigned approbation to its first Citizen, however novel and interesting it may be, derives all its lustre (a lustre which accident or enthusiasm could not bestow, and which adulation would tarnish) from the transcendant merit of which it is the voluntary testimony.
May you long enjoy that liberty which is so dear to You, and to which Your name will ever be so dear: May Your own Virtues and a Nation’s prayers [o]btain the happiest Sunshine for the decline of Your days, and the choicest of future blessings. For our Country’s sake; for the sake of republican liberty, it is our earnest wish that Your example may be the guide of Your successors; and thus, after being the ornament and safe-guard of the present age, become the patrimony of our descendants.7
Signed by order, and behalf of the House,
Jonathan Dayton Speaker.
Attest John Beckley. Clerk.
LB, DLC:GW. A printed version of this document is in , 9:32–34. The following text precedes the body of this letter: “In conformity, to the Appointment made Yesterday The House of Representatives waited on the President this day at two Oclock, and the Speaker thereof delivered the following Address.”
This document was the House’s response to GW’s annual message to Congress of 7 December. One day after GW’s delivery of that speech, the House resolved “that a respectful address ought to be presented … to the President … in answer to his speech to both Houses of Congress. …” (, 9:18). In a letter to Thomas Jefferson of 10 Dec., Virginia congressman James Madison described the House committee appointed to draw up the address: “The answer to the Presidents Speech is in the hands of [House members] [Fisher] Ames, [Samuel] Sitgreaves [William Loughton] Smith of Carola. [Abraham] Baldwin & myself. The form is not yet settled. There is a hope that it may be got into a form that will go down without altercation or d[i]vision in the House” (, 16:424–25). The committee’s draft response to the annual message was read before the House on 14 December. A lengthy debate followed. When a committee of the whole House considered the draft address to GW, several proposals were made to amend it (see , 9:28–35; see also , 4th Cong., 2d sess., 1597–1668; for the House’s proposed revisions to the address, see the notes below). The House agreed to a final version on 15 Dec., when it passed the following resolution: “That Mr. Speaker [Jonathan Dayton], attended by the House, do present the said address; and that Mr. Ames, Mr. Madison, and Mr. Sitgreaves, be a committee to wait on the President, to know when, and where, it will be convenient for him to receive the same” (, 9:35). In accordance with the resolution, this document was delivered to GW at the executive mansion in Philadelphia on this date (16 Dec.) (see , 9:36, 42–43). Madison commented on the House’s address: “You will see in the answer to the P.s speech, much room for criticism. You must, for the present, be content to know that it resulted from a choice of evils. His reply to the foreign paragraph indicates a good effect on his mind. Indeed he cannot but wish to avoid entailing a war on his successor. The danger lies in the fetters he has put on himself & in the irritation & distrust of the French government” (Madison to Jefferson, 19 Dec., in , 16:432–34). For GW’s reply to the House address, see n.7 below.
The U.S. House “had the state of the union under consideration” on 16 Dec., and formulated six resolutions that referred several of GW’s proposals to committees for further examination. These resolutions, for instance, directed congressional inquiries relative to naval equipment, manufactures, agriculture, compensation of federal officials, public debt, and harbor defense (, 9:38–39).
For the full text of the annual message, see GW to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, 7 December.
1. For the agreement under which the American prisoners at Algiers were ransomed, see Timothy Pickering to GW, 27 July 1796. For the House’s later efforts to procure additional information on Algerine affairs, see GW to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, 9 Jan. 1797. In March 1797, Congress passed a law that authorized the president to apply up to $280,259.03 “to the expenses which may have been incurred in any negotiations with the Dey and Regency of Algiers” and that allowed a further sum to be appropriated “for discharging the two first years’ annuity to the Dey” ( 505–6).
2. On 15 Dec., an unsuccessful motion was made to strike out the preceding nineteen words, and to insert, after the word “perseverance,” the following phrase: “at the same time we assure ourselves that your confidence in the patriotism, self-respect, and fortitude of our citizens, will not, in any event, be disappointed; and that they will, on no occasion, forget what is due to the character and dignity of our government and country” (, 9:29).
3. During the House debates over the content of the present document, Virginia congressman William Branch Giles objected to “those parts of the Address which speak of the wisdom and firmness of the President.” His protest was based on his claims to have witnessed “a want of wisdom and firmness in the Administration for the last six years” (, 4th Cong., 2d sess., 1615).
4. For GW’s election to the presidency in spring 1789, see , 5:445–47. Before taking office that year, GW expressed his hesitation to “quit a peaceful abode for an Ocean of difficulties,” but promised “Integrity & firmness” in his conduct (GW to Henry Knox, 1 April 1789).
5. The House alludes to both GW’s resignation of his commission as commander in chief of the Continental forces on 23 Dec. 1783, and to his recent decision to retire from the presidency.
6. Instead of the preceding eight words, the initial draft of the House’s address to GW had: “The spectacle of a whole nation, the freest and most enlightened in the world …” (, 4th Cong., 2d sess., 1612). Giles objected to that phraseology. He argued: “if we are free, it is not prudent to declare it; if enlightened, it is not our duty in this House to trumpet it to the world: it is no Legislative concern” (, 4th Cong., 2d sess., 1616).
7. On 15 Dec., an unsuccessful motion was made to strike out the preceding forty-three words (see , 9:30–31).
GW replied to the U.S. House of Representatives on this date: “To a citizen whose views were unambitious; who preferred the shade and tranquility of a private life, to the splendour and solicitude of elevated stations; and whom the voice of duty and his country could alone have drawn from his chosen retreat, no reward for his public services can be so grateful as public approbation, accompanied by a consciousness, that to render those services useful to that country, has been his single aim; and when this approbation is expressed by the Representatives of a free and enlightened nation, the reward will admit of no addition. Receive, Gentlemen, my sincere and affectionate thanks for this signal testimony, that my services have been acceptable and useful to my country. The strong confidence of my fellow citizens, while it animated all my actions, ensured their zealous co-operation, which rendered those services successful. The virtue and wisdom of my successors, joined with the patriotism and intelligence of the citizens who compose the other branches of government, I firmly trust, will lead them to the adoption of measures, which, by the beneficence of Providence, will give stability to our system of government; add to its success; and secure to ourselves, and to posterity, that liberty which is to all of us so dear.
“While I acknowledge with pleasure, the sincere and uniform disposition of the House of Representatives to preserve our neutral relations inviolate; and with them deeply regret any degree of interruption of our good understanding with the French Republic, I beg you, Gentlemen, to rest assured, that my endeavours will be earnest and unceasing, by all honorable means, to preserve peace, and to restore that harmony and affection which have heretofore so happily subsisted between our two nations; and with you, I cherish the pleasing hope, that a mutual spirit of justice and moderation will crown those endeavors with success.
“I shall cheerfully concur in the beneficial measures which your deliberations shall mature on the various subjects demanding your attention. And while directing your labours to advance the real interests of our country, you receive its blessings; with perfect sincerity my individual wishes will be offered for your present and future felicity” (D, DNA: RG 233, entry 28, journals; LB, DLC:GW).