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A Sacred Union of Citizens: George Washington's Farewell Address and the American Character. By Matthew Spalding and Patrick J. Garrity. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996. xviii, 216 pp. $27.95, ISBN 0-8476-8261-7.)
Matthew Spalding is director of lectures and educational programs at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Patrick J. Garrity is a staff member at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute. Together they have written the first notable book on George Washington's Farewell Address since Victor Paltsits' definitive 1935 study of the document's authorship and preparation. Although they do not break a great deal of new ground for Washington scholars, they do provide an admirable synthesis and interpretation that situates the Farewell Address in historical perspective and elucidates its continuing relevance to debates about American character, citizenship, and foreign policy.
According to Spalding and Garrity,...