How would a modern-day president give an address like this? Would a president today use the same rhetoric that Washington used? Would he or she use similar language and sentence structure? Washington wrote his address as a letter, which was quickly reprinted in newspapers and in pamphlets all over the nation. How would a modern president share the address, and who would be the audience? Reread the selection, comparing Washington’s rhetoric with the style you might hear in political speeches today. Then write a brief essay in which you make and defend a claim about how a modern president’s farewell address would be similar to and different from Washington’s.
