Regional Differences In George Washington's Farewell Address

George Washington’s Farewell Address was published in a newspaper in September 1796 and became widely reprinted throughout the United States. In his Farewell Address, George Washington announced that he would not be running for a third term in the 1796 presidential election then explained why and gave some very sage advice for keeping the country afloat in the future. He mainly warned off three things: don’t allow regional differences to divide the country, don’t allow political parties to cause a rift in the country’s unity, and don’t become too close with any foreign nations. George Washington’s Farewell Address is as pertinent today, if not more, as the day it was published in September 1796. George Washington started off his address by

It has been happening practically since Washington wrote his Farewell Address. The divide between the north and south especially got much wider and wider before eventually leading to The Civil War. The Civil War was arguably caused by the political parties riling up the South by telling them that the North wanted to take their slaves and completely evaporate all their income they were getting from the labor provided by slavery. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens stated that The Confederacy is a country built on the principle that white people are superior to African Americans (Landis 2015). This, arguably, made the south not want to attempt to find a compromise with the north. The North had party leaders pushing them to end tariffs that the south benefitted from in order to make money for the north. Political leaders blowing up these differences between regions is the reason that a compromise was not able to be reached and inevitably a major part of the reason our country was so divided it went into a civil war. Today, regionality is being used to divide the country. For example, in the 2016 election, Republican candidate and eventual President gained the vote in West Virginia by promising to save the coal mines which was an issue almost exclusive to that area. President Trump also promised to bring factory work back to the midwest states and also made several claims that the democrats didn’t care about the blue collar midwest in an attempt to divide the country by region. President Trump not only riled up certain regions of the country but attacked certain regions in order to gain leverage in other regions. An example of this is blatant attacks on the liberal northeast including Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, etc. which he has called “liberal elitists” and