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How Did Washington's Farewell Address Dbq

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Introduction
In his Farewell Address, delivered on September 19, 1796, Washington articulates a position of non-entanglement in foreign affairs.
“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world” (Washington)
As the young nation recovered from its war of independence and worked to secure its own internal cohesion, Washington did not believe that the states could withstand another war, which foreign entanglements would necessarily provoke, given events in Europe in the 1790s, most notably, the French Revolution and its related foreign wars.
At a time when France and Britain were at war, Washington was careful to articulate a foreign policy that would allow the United States to extricate itself …show more content…

The colonies relied on France for aid, but this gave France an undue amount of influence.
As LaFeber explains, “No sooner did France promise to help, however, than Vergennes instructed his agents in the New World to keep the United States as small and weak as possible” (LaFeber, 23).
“By 1779-1780, the Continental Congress seemed to be a slave to Vergennes. Its sad state was not due solely to the number of American politicians on the French payroll…but because U.S. survival seemed to depend on French help.” (LaFeber, 24)
After the revolution, a reliance on British trade threatened to compromise American independence yet again
“Because the United States depended on British trade, Sheffield argued, London could demand tough terms. It especially could do so because under the Articles of Confederation, the thirteen states were too weak and decentralized to fight back with a united policy.” (LaFeber, 28)
Because the states were not sufficiently unified, the British played the states off one another
In fact, the motivation for the writing of the constitution was in large part to unify the states in order to manage trade relations with brutal foreign powers like Britain and …show more content…

Furthermore, the French Revolution was not merely internal to France: the French declared war on the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1792, and in 1793 declared war on Great Britain and the Netherlands, just two weeks after Washington’s second inaugural
“the debate over the next quarter-century on whether the new nation, surrounded by great empires, could conduct a foreign policy that would allow the survival of the constitutional experiment.” (LaFeber, 41)
Pressure was rising for the newly formed States to participate in the conflict, from the French and the British
The French Ambassador, Edmond Genet, was sent to the U.S. to stir up sentiment in favor of the French

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