The farewell dinner

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.