Hamilton: Washington’s Farewell Address holds lessons for today Lee Hamilton

George Washington’s Farewell Address is one of the key documents of America’s founding era.

It’s not as familiar as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and some other writings, but it was a clarion call for national unity when the United States was forming its identity.

It’s also remarkably pertinent to our own time. As political scientist Robert Strong writes in a recent essay, the dangers that Washington foresaw for the young republic “seem startlingly contemporary and relevant 229 years later.”

Chief among Washington’s concerns was excessive partisanship, which, he wrote, “agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, (and) foments occasionally riot and insurrection.”

The Farewell Address, writte