he
impending evils, and the absolute necessity of the case seem to have
reconciled some persons to the adoption of it, whose opinions had been
strenuously the other way.

"In our endeavors," said Washington, "to establish a new general
government, the contest, nationally considered, seems not to have been
so much for glory as for existence. It was for a long time doubtful
whether we were to survive, as an independent republic, or decline from
our federal dignity into insignificant and withered fragments of
empire."

FOOTNOTES:

[32] Called the "Constitutional Convention."--ED.

INAUGURATION OF WASHINGTON

HIS FAREWELL ADDRESS

A.D. 1789-1797

JAMES K. PAULDING and GEORGE WASHINGTON

In times when "logical candidates" for the Presidency of the
United States are periodically exploited by rival parties,
it is a salutary thing, which can never too often be
repeated, to look back to the first filling of the chief
magistracy of the country.

No parallel is seen in history to the unanimity of
Washington's election, a call which his modest reluctance
could not refuse, for there was no other who could serve his
country's need. The tribute of a nation was again paid in
his unanimous reelection to a second term, which nothing
except his own will determined for the last.

Familiar as is the fame of Washington and of his services to
his country and mankind, there is no name in the records of
the world which still commands a more universal veneration.
Nor is this sentiment diminished, among intelligent people,
now that his character and work have been divested of those
elements of myth or tradition which formerly enveloped them;
rather by the critical process of humanizing is his
reputation more endeared to his countrymen and more firmly
established in the eyes of the world.

To enter here upon the innumerable details of Washington's
presidential labors is impossible; they belong to general
history. But among the great events of history the civil and
political acts of the man who was first in peace as well as
in war stand conspicuous, and in Paulding's narrative and
appreciation they are fittingly commemorated.

The convention which framed the United States Constitution met at
Philadelphia, and unanimously chose Washington its president. This
situation in some measure precluded h