If he had needed to be strengthened in his determination, his opponents furnished the requisite aid.  In February, 1796, the House refused to adjourn on his birthday for half an hour, in order to go and pay him their respects, as had been the pleasant custom up to that time.  The Democrats of that day were in no confusion of mind as to the party to which Washington belonged, and they did not hesitate to put this deliberate slight upon him in order to mark their dislike.  This was not the utterance of a newspaper editor, but the well-considered act of the representatives of a party in Congress.  Party feeling, indeed, could hardly have gone further; and this single incident is sufficient to dispel the pleasing delusion that party strife and bitterness are the product of modern days, and of more advanced forms of political organization.

Yet despite all these attacks there can be no doubt that Washington’s hold upon the masses of the people was substantially unshaken.  They would have gladly seen him assume the presidency for the third time, and if the test had been made, thousands of men who gave their votes to the opposition would have still supported him for the greatest office in their gift.  But this time Washington would not yield to the wishes of his friends or of the country.  He felt that he had done his work and earned the rest and the privacy for which he longed above all earthly things.  In September, 1796, he published his farewell address, and no man ever left a nobler political testament.  Through much tribulation he had done his great part in establishing the government of the Union, which might easily have come to naught without his commanding influence.  He had imparted to it the dignity of his own great character.  He had sustained the splendid financial policy of Hamilton.  He had struck a fatal blow at the colonial spirit in our politics, and had lifted up our foreign policy to a plane worthy of an independent nation.  He had stricken off the fetters which impeded the march of western settlement, and without loss of honor had gained time to enable our institutions to harden and become strong.  He had made peace with our most dangerous enemies, and, except in the case of France, where there were perilous complications to be solved by his successor, he left the United States in far better and more honorable relations with the rest of the world than even the most sanguine would have dared to hope when the Constitution was formed.  Now from the heights of great achievement he turned to say farewell to the people whom he so much loved, and whom he had so greatly served.  Every word was instinct with the purest and wisest patriotism.  “Be united,” he said; “be Americans.  The name which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.  Let there be no sectionalism, no North, South, East or West; you are all dependent one on another, and