- Click here for the text.
For comparison's sake with the one recently delivered, here are a few facts about it:
It was:
- delivered on January 8, 1790.
- given as a speech to a joint session on Congress.
- given at the opening of the second session of the 1st Congress.
- the shortest: 1,083
- delivered at a 20.4 education level.
Give recent attention to gun rights, I found this part interesting:
A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.
The bearing of arms must be disciplined, and - as I read it - there should be a unique source of these arms. I'm not up on the history of that era as it pertains to arms, so I'm not clear at the moment about what that's all about. He does mention this in a section dealing with how the common defense is best provided for - so it seems connected to militias.
As far as other requests, keeping in mind that he has been president a year and he is in a position to make practical requests about items that Congress could provide him that would help him do his job, here's what he asked for:
- means to deal with "certain hostile tribes of Indians."
- executive positions - adequately compensated - that would assist " our intercourse with other nations."
- "Various considerations also render it expedient that the terms on which foreigners may be admitted to the rights of citizens should be speedily ascertained by a uniform rule of naturalization."
- "Uniformity in the currency, weights, and measures of the United States."
- "the expediency of giving effectual encouragement as well to the introduction of new and useful inventions from abroad as to the exertions of skill and genius in producing them at home."
- " . . . facilitating the intercourse between the distant parts of our country by a due attention to the post-office and post-roads."
- "the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness."
And there's this bit I want to highlight separately because it suggest that Washington was open to the possibility of establishing a national university at least in part to assist citizens in governing themselves.
To the security of a free constitution it contributes in various ways - by convincing those who are intrusted with the public administration that every valuable end of government is best answered by the enlightened confidence of the people, and by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of society; to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness - cherishing the first, avoiding the last - and uniting a speedy but temperate vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the laws.
Whether this desirable object will be best promoted by affording aids to seminaries of learning already established, by the institution of a national university, or by any other expedients will be well worthy of a place in the deliberations of the legislature.
This might be worth exploring in class. Some of these issue seem similar to those we deal with today.
