the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty

If they ask you a question, before you can utter three words of your answer they will break out upon you again and talk away.” As John Adams complained, “They talk very loud, very fast and altogether. He crossed the Hudson into the capital city on a barge surrounded by tall ships and celebratory cannon fire, accompanied by the strains of “God Save the King.” The city boasted a population of 50,000 people, but its character was already established. On the seven-day, 240-mile trip to New York, Washington was greeted with petal-strewn streets and triumphal arches, finding it all a bit embarrassing. On April Fool’s Day, 1789, Washington wrote General Knox, “my movements to the chair of government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution.” Two weeks later, he left Mount Vernon, confessing to his diary that he possessed “a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sensations than I have words to express.” The Pennsylvania Packet described his departure for duty in dramatic terms: Washington had chosen to “bid adieu to the peaceful retreat of Mount Vernon, in order to save his country once more from confusion and anarchy.” Madison pronounced it “so strange a production” and quickly decamped to Mount Vernon for a week, where they worked on a new, slimmer draft. Washington copied the speech into his own hand and sent the draft off to James Madison to review in early January 1789 after asking for the most secure means of delivering such a “private and confidential” letter.

Included in the draft were some memorable lines that survived the scissors of early biographers and admirers, most notably when Washington was to declare, “I rejoice in the belief that mankind will reverse the absurd position that the many were made for the few and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can be freemen in another.” But Humphreys did not have the gift of brevity, and his first draft of the inaugural ran seventy-three pages, a rolling rumination offering patriotic aphorisms, prayer, directions to Congress, and denials of dynastic ambition.

After the war he lived at Mount Vernon, serving as Washington’s personal secretary. Humphreys had the advantage of proximity. He entrusted the task to his wartime aide-de-camp David Humphreys, a Yale-educated schoolteacher and sometime poet who irritated his colleagues with late-night poetry readings. Pleading domestic responsibilities, she declined to accompany her husband to his inaugural.Īgainst this anxious backdrop, Washington began working on the first inaugural address in the winter of 1789. Martha was not pleased about the prospective move to New York City undercutting her dreams of a well-deserved retirement. All was not well on the home front, either. He was uncertain of his capacity to serve as a head of state and always covetous of his most precious possession, his reputation. Washington worried that he had more to lose than gain by becoming the first president of the United States. Weeks before, he was busy trying to tie up his affairs at Mount Vernon, struggling to secure a loan to pay off his debts while preparing an inaugural address. George Washington was not looking forward to his first inaugural. Excerpted from The Daily Beast Editor in Chief John Avlon’s Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations :

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty