A Sacred Union of Citizens: George Washington's Farewell Address and the American Character

Amazon.com Review One of the most popular words in American politics today is "character." Authors Spalding and Garrity present George Washington not only as a president of impeccable personal credentials, but also as a man who had important lessons for the American people regarding the character of their leaders. These lessons are embodied in his Farewell Address, which is best remembered for its warning against foreign entanglements. Yet it's really a meditation on how a nation can cultivate the habits, morals and civic virtues necessary for stable self-government. Bonus for history buffs: Daniel Boorstin writes the introduction. From Library Journal In this election year, it's fitting to remember our only unopposed president and the farewell address that set the standard. Congress regularly reprints it, but there has been little analytical popular literature on this seminal address. (There would not be another significant one until Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex 164 years later.) Despite rumblings about Francophobic touches, the farewell address is a document that attempts to set out a rationale for the Union and its conservative foreign policy. Yet Spalding (Heritage Foundation) and Garrity (Claremont Inst.) focus as much on the effect of Washington's character on the new republic as on his speech. The first few chapters constitute a brief biography that gets us past the mythological facade that Parson Weems created. The bulk of the book outlines Washington's efforts to impress his character traits on the new government and to establish its course. With the full text of the farewell address appended, this is a good choice for both academic and public libraries.?James Doyle, Macomb Community Coll., Warren, Mich. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. Genre : History Formats : EPUB, MOBI Quality : 5 The first book in a trilogy—and in many respects the best of the bunch—The Colonial Experience is an essential interpretation of how the habits of people who lived more than two centuries ago shaped the lives of modern Americans. Boorstin shows how an undiscovered continent shattered long-standing traditions and utopian fantasies with the hard demands of everyday life far from the sophisticated centers of European civilization: "Old categories were shaken up, and new situations revealed unsuspected uses for old knowledge," writes Boorstin. He starts with a series of penetrating essays on the Puritans of Massachusetts, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the philanthropists of Georgia, and the planters of Virginia, then tackles a set of diffuse topics that range from astronomy to language to medicine in fascinating vignettes. Governor William Bradford, an eyewitness, reported the landing of the Mayflower passengers on the American shore in mid-November 1620. Never had a Promised Land looked more unpromising. But within a century and a half -- even before the American Revolution -- this forbidding scene had become one of the more "civill" parts of the world. The large outlines of a new civilization had been drawn. How did it happen? Winner of the Bancroft Prize. "A superb panorama of life in America from the first settlements on through the white hot days of the Revolution."--Bruce Lancaster, Saturday Review From the Trade Paperback edition Winner of the Bancroft Prize In this brilliantly original book, written for the general reader, the American past becomes richly meaningful to the present.