1. When GW intended to retire in 1792, he had JM draft a farewell address, but as GW was persuaded to remain in office, he did not then use it. However, in 1796 upon his determination to retire, GW drafted a new address based in part on JM’s draft but with additional commentary. He sent it to AH for review, and AH prepared a new draft, to which he made further revisions after discussing the text with JJ, before forwarding it to GW. AH also revised the original draft and returned it to GW, but the president decided to work from AH’s original revision, and after conferring with cabinet members, sent his revised text dated 17 Sept. to David C. Claypoole for publication in the American Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia) on 19 Sept. JJ then sent this final suggestion to GW that he rephrase one passage in the address, but it arrived too late to be included.

The paragraph in question as printed in the published version of the Farewell Address read as follows: “Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favours or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing (with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them); conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that ’tis folly in one nation to look for disinterested favours from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favours, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favours from nation to nation. ’Tis an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.” Following the deaths of AH and GW, JJ was at various times called to testify as to their relative roles in the authorship of the address. See especially JJ to Richard Peters, 29 Mar. 1811, FC, NNC (EJ: 12797); C, PHi (EJ: 04050).

See also the Introductory Note and text to AH to GW, 10 May; GW to AH, 15 May; AH, Abstract of Points to Form and Address [16 May-5 July 1796]; AH to GW, 30 July 1796; and AH, Draft of Washington’s Farewell Address,” PAH description begins Harold C. Syrett et al., eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (27 vols.; New York, 1961–87) description ends , 20: 169–73, 174–78, 178–83, 264–65, 265–88; PGW: PS description begins Dorothy Twohig et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series (19 vols. to date; Charlottesville, Va., 1987–) description ends , 10: 349–54, 478–84; Carol M. Brier, “John Jay and George Washington’s Valedictory,” parts 1 and 2, Supreme Court Historical Society Quarterly 32 (2010), no. 1: 6–9, and no. 2: 6–9; and Washington’s farewell address, in facsimile, with transliterations of all the drafts of Washington, Madison, & Hamilton, together with their correspondence and other supporting documents; edited, with a history of its origin, reception by the nation, rise of the controversy respecting its authorship, and a bibliography by Victor Hugo Paltsits (New York, 1935).