An imagined gathering
1796 · Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Washington gathers the men who have made and opposed his administration before announcing that he will retire.
Washington has decided not to stand for a third term, and he has called his old colleagues together one last time before the farewell address is published. Adams, his successor in waiting, is there; Jefferson and Hamilton, whose quarrel has come to define the government, are both at the table; Madison, who helped write the address, has come to hear it read.
The mood is elegiac. Washington speaks about the danger of party spirit and about the union as the main pillar of independence, and for an evening the men who will spend the next decade fighting each other agree. They eat oyster stew, glazed ham, and pot roast, finish with election cake, and drink madeira punch. When they part, Washington has set the precedent that will define the office more than any law.
Host: George Washington
John Adams — Vice president, about to succeed Washington as president.
Thomas Jefferson — Leader of the opposition and uneasy about the address's warnings.
Alexander Hamilton — Chief author of the farewell address and Washington's closest adviser.
James Madison — Consulted on the address and a leading Republican in Congress.
Drink
a period dish
George Washington
How Washington's two terms, cabinet, and farewell address defined an office the Constitution had described only in outline.
George Washington
The Virginia plantation Washington managed for most of his life, and the private world to which he returned after the presidency.
James Madison
Federalist Number Ten: that a large republic controls the mischief of faction better than a small one.
This gathering is an editorial recreation grounded in the biographies of those present; it did not necessarily take place as described.