#1301 Farewell Address
Listening to America
Listening to America
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 August 2018
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"George Washington ... was as close to a perfect human being as we believed existed on Earth."
— Clay S. Jenkinson portraying Thomas Jefferson
This week, we speak with President Jefferson about George Washington's farewell address which was first published in Philadelphia's American Daily Advertiser on September 19, 1796, 222 years ago.
Presidents leave a little note in the desk for their successor, and the public always wants to know what's in those notes. We seldom learn that, but the tradition of giving a farewell address is no longer a big part of American life. The last one was Eisenhower, but Washington set the tone in 1796. President Jefferson tells us what he thought of that tone. We know that Jefferson was aware that Madison wrote the first draft, and Hamilton the final draft, of Washington's farewell address. Mr. Jefferson was not too happy about that. He saw that Madison had recovered his senses and had now broken with the Federalists, and he hated the fact that Hamilton played a role in the great man's life.
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You can learn more about our Cultural Tours & Retreats with Clay S. Jenkinson at jeffersonhour.com/tours.
Thomas Jefferson is interpreted by Clay S. Jenkinson.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good Day Thomas Jefferson Hour podcast. |
| 0:03.8 | You've gone into your fundraising voice. |
| 0:06.7 | And thank you for listening without you, we are nothing. |
| 0:10.3 | And maybe nothing anyway. |
| 0:11.9 | You know if you really think about it. |
| 0:13.0 | I picked the show this week and I really because it kept coming up in the news, |
| 0:17.5 | you know, that people were, there was these little hidden |
| 0:20.0 | references to Washington's Farewell address, so I read it. |
| 0:23.5 | You read like all 25 pages of it? |
| 0:25.8 | 32 handwritten. |
| 0:27.8 | What did you learn? |
| 0:28.8 | That Jefferson really didn't like it too much. |
| 0:31.6 | I think Jefferson was probably sitting at home going, |
| 0:34.0 | you know, Washington could have had me write this instead of that |
| 0:38.0 | Hamilton guy. It would have been shorter. I can tell you that. |
| 0:41.0 | You can hear that in Jefferson's voice this week though you know |
| 0:43.7 | there's a little bit of I don't want to say envy because that's |
| 0:47.4 | well you know it's beneath it's not envy but I think there was he knew that in part the |
| 0:51.7 | farewell address had been written against him because he was Washington's Secretary of State. |
| 0:57.0 | Washington had high respect for Jefferson. |
| 1:00.0 | Jefferson then winds up breaking with his own administration to a certain degree and |
| 1:05.4 | threatening to resign over and over again and finally resigning in a kind of huff and |
... |
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