To George Washington from the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, 15 February 1797
II
From the Pennsylvania House of Representatives
[Philadelphia, 15 Feb. 1797]
Sir
When we contemplate the near approach of your retirement from public to private Life, as announced to your Fellow Citizens, in your Address of the 17th of September last;1 we should be wanting in duty to our own feelings, and those of our Constituents, if we did not cordially embrace this last occasion, to join the grateful Voice of the American Nation, in the Acknowledgment of your long Services and patriotic Labors, in the Atchievement of our Independence, and the Establishment and Maintenance of our peace, Liberty and Safety.
In the House where we now deliberate, could we be silent, its walls, if they had utterance, would testify for us that they beheld you seated in our first Congress, and, at their Call, rising undaunted to lead our infant Armies to Victory or Death, in the Cause of Liberty and our Country. They beheld you again, after the issue of that perilous, but auspicious Combat, seated in the same House, and presiding, eminently illustrious, among the illustrious Band of Statesmen and Patriots, who framed the present happy Constitution of the Union.2
We forbear, Sir, a detail of your Services, as well before, as since, the Commencement of the Revolution. Were we adequate to the task, it would fall more properly within the Province of some future Historian, who cannot be suspected of personal Affection, or public prejudice.
It is our present duty only to express our grateful sense of your General Services. Prudent, firm and magnanimous in War; never despairing of the public Safety in the worst of times, nor elated by Success, in the best; confiding in, and confided by, your Country, to its greatest advantage; gloriously relinquishing your military Character, when the great national purposes for which it was assumed left you at liberty to seek your beloved retirement; and with equal glory, quitting that retirement, at the Call of your Country to execute its Councils and Commands in time of peace3—the faithful Guardian and intelligent Organ of its Laws; maintaining its Freedom, asserting its Honor and Independence; and at last, when in your best Judgment, without an abatement of Love for your Country; you conceived that the time was come, when you might be safely indulged in a final return to that retirement which your years and Services merited—then bequeathing the fruits of your Wisdom and Experience in a Farewell Address, the Maxims and Precepts of which, we trust, will ever be regarded, as the richest Legacy of a Father to his Children and latest Posterity.
The same ardent affection which leads us, reluctantly, to acquiesce in your approaching retirement, commands our fervent wishes—that you may enjoy in this World the utmost Felicity of your Heart, in beholding the perpetual Prosperity of our Country, under a Succession of wise and virtuous Statesmen and Rulers, animated by your Example; and that when you are called from this World, you may be rewarded by the unbounded Felicity of the World to come.4
George Latimer, Speaker
DS, DLC:GW; LB, DLC:GW. Both the DS and LB contain the following heading: “The Address of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in General Assembly met.” The DS is docketed “Feby 17th 1797,” but the address was written by 15 Feb., the day it was adopted.
On 15 Feb. 1797, in addition to adopting the address, members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives also appointed a committee “to wait on the President, to know at what time he will be pleased to receive the said Address” (Journal of the First Session of the Seventh House of Representatives of … Pennsylvania, which Commenced at Philadelphia … the Sixth Day of December… One Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety-Six … [Philadelphia, 1797], 201–4). The House’s address was delivered to GW on 17 February. In his diary entry for that date, Jacob Hiltzheimer, Philadelphia resident and member of the state legislature, wrote: “At noon the Speaker of the House [George Latimer] with a number of members waited on President Washington with the address of the House” (, 240). On the following day, GW recorded that “One third of the Pennsylvania Ho. of Representatives dined” at the executive mansion (, 6:234). Hiltzheimer also noted this dinner in his diary entry for 18 Feb., where he indicated that he and twenty-one other members of the House dined with GW at “four o’clock” that day. Hiltzheimer added: “Our Speaker sat between the President and his lady, and I on the left of the President” (, 240).
George Latimer (1750–1825) of Philadelphia was a delegate to Pennsylvania’s ratifying convention in 1787. He served in the state House of Representatives from 1792 to 1799, and was speaker for five of those years. Latimer became a customs collector for Philadelphia in 1798 and served in that office until 1802. During the War of 1812, he was a member and treasurer of the Committee of Defence for Philadelphia.
1. See Farewell Address, 19 Sept. 1796, and the accompanying editorial note.
2. The Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall, served as the meeting-place of both the Second Continental Congress, which selected GW as commander in chief of the Continental forces in June 1775, and the Constitutional Convention of 1787, over which GW presided. That same building housed the Pennsylvania legislature at this time.
3. GW retired to Mount Vernon soon after resigning his commission as commander in chief of the Continental forces on 23 Dec. 1783. When elected to the presidency in the spring of 1789, GW abandoned his retirement to return to public service.
4. GW replied to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in an undated letter, which reads: “The kindness of my fellow-citizens has given me frequent occasions to make my acknowledgments for their expressions of confidence, attachment and affection; and for their honorable testimonies that my public cares and labours have been useful to my country.
“With great satisfaction I receive your additional testimony, that as a public man I have not lived in vain.
“Though now seeking that repose which retirement and the tranquil pursuit of rural affairs are calculated to afford, and which my time of life requires, the love of my country will indeed suffer no abatement: its safety & prosperity will be essential to the enjoyment of my remaining years. And I confide in the discernment and patriotism of my fellow-citizens for the choice of wise and virtuous men who will successively administer every branch of the government in such manner as, under divine Providence, to enforce the general happiness.
“For your affectionate wishes for my present & future felicity, accept, gentlemen, my cordial thanks” (ALS, in private hands; ALS [retained copy], ViU: Gwathmey Autographs Collection Microfilm; LB, DLC:GW). GW’s reply likely was written on 17 Feb. 1797, the date given on the letter-book copy.