George Washington Gave America This Advice the First Time He Tried to Retire

When George Washington resigned his commission as commander in chief of the Continental Army in the summer of 1783, he believed he was closing the book on public life. At fifty-one, he wanted only Mount Vernon, his fields, and the quiet rhythm of a private citizen. Yet before he stepped away, he drafted a document that would echo across American history: the Circular Letter to the States. Sent to all thirteen state governors by June 21, 1783, the letter laid out four essentials he believed were necessary for the young republic to survive. For students of Indigenous history, the letter is not merely a founding artifact — it is a window into a moment when Native nations, sovereign and strategically positioned across the continent, were the decisive geopolitical factor in whether that republic would endure at all.

Washington wrote at a precarious moment. The Treaty of Paris had not yet been signed, and Britain still occupied frontier posts it had promised to abandon. The governors guarded their prerogatives jealously against Congress. The wartime army had to be dissolved without pay or pension guarantees. And the Confederation was buried under war debt. In that vacuum of authority, Native nations — the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Cherokee, the Shawnee, the Muscogee Creek, the Lenape, and dozens of others — held the balance of power across the Ohio Country, the Southeast, and the Great Lakes.

The Circular Letter in Its Native Context

Washington’s four essentials were, in his words, “essential to the existence of the United States as an independent Power.” They were: unity under “one federal head”; a “sacred regard to public justice”; a “proper peace establishment” — a peacetime military; and a willingness to sacrifice local prejudices for the common good. He warned that “with our fate will the destiny of unborn millions be involved.”

What the letter does not say, but what the historical record makes plain, is that every one of those four pillars ran directly through Indian Country.

1. Unity Under One Federal Head — and the Treaty Problem

Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress could make treaties but had no reliable mechanism to enforce them against states that simply ignored them. Individual states — Georgia, New York, Virginia, Massachusetts — signed or repudiated treaties with Native nations more or less at will. Washington and his Secretary at War, Henry Knox, understood the crisis this created: if the United States could not honor a treaty, no Native nation had reason to treat with it. The Proclamation of 1763, which had reserved lands west of the Appalachian crest for Native nations, was already being violated by settler encroachment — with Washington himself among the speculators who had invested in those western lands.

2. A Sacred Regard to Public Justice — the Knox Doctrine

Washington’s second pillar — public justice — was interpreted by Henry Knox in a series of reports to Congress in 1789 and 1790 as directly concerning Native nations. Knox argued that the United States had a moral and legal obligation to recognize Indigenous title and to purchase land only through lawful treaty. That reasoning formed the basis of the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1790, which reserved treaty-making with tribes to the federal government alone. It was a doctrine honored more often in rhetoric than in practice.

3. A Proper Peace Establishment — the Militia on the Frontier

Washington’s third pillar — a peacetime military — was shaped by two realities. First, the Continental Army was dissolving. Second, the frontier wars that would define the first decades of the republic — the Northwest Indian War, culminating at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 and the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 — demanded a standing force capable of fighting organized Native confederacies. By 1792, Congress had authorized the Legion of the United States under General Anthony Wayne, an army built specifically to defeat the Western Confederacy.

4. Sacrificing Local Prejudices — the Unkept Promise

Washington’s fourth pillar — that Americans forget local prejudices and sacrifice individual advantage for the community — was applied to Native nations almost exclusively in the negative. The “community” Washington envisioned did not include sovereign Indigenous polities within its borders. When he returned to public life as president in 1789, he authorized the first federal military campaigns against Native nations and presided over a policy of treaty-making that extracted land cessions far beyond what the documents fairly conveyed.

The Letter’s Unexpected Afterlife

Washington understood that his letter might be seen as an overreach. “I am aware,” he wrote, “that those who differ from me in political sentiment, may perhaps remark, I am stepping out of the proper line of my duty.” But he also asserted that “silence in me would be a crime.” The letter was reprinted in newspapers in 1787, on the eve of the Constitutional Convention — where the “one federal head” argument he had made in 1783 became the framers’ central concern.

Washington’s retirement did not stick. On April 14, 1789, Charles Thomson, Secretary of Congress, delivered the news of his unanimous election as president to Mount Vernon. Washington accepted: “Whatever may have been my private feelings and sentiments, I believe I cannot give a greater evidence of my sensibility for the honor they have done me, than by accepting the appointment.” His Farewell Address of 1796 would echo the Circular Letter’s themes, but by then the republic’s relationship with Native nations had been decisively set on a course toward removal and dispossession — a course that would be completed by his successors and that resonates today in conflicts over land, sovereignty, and memory such as the ongoing disputes at places like the sacred Black Hills.

Historical Context & Key Cultural Takeaways

The Circular Letter of 1783 reveals a founding generation aware that the survival of the United States depended on its ability to manage relations with sovereign Native nations — and largely unwilling to do so on terms of justice. Washington’s four pillars were framed as universal republican virtues, but they were applied to Indian Country as instruments of expansion. The letter’s call for “a sacred regard to public justice” stands as one of the earliest federal statements recognizing that Native treaties were binding on the republic as a whole. The Constitution that emerged in 1787 reserved treaty-making to the federal government in a direct response to the failures Washington identified. Yet the outcome for Native nations was not justice but a century and a half of dispossession. Understanding the Circular Letter in this light is essential to understanding both the republic’s founding ideals and the gap between those ideals and the realities of Indigenous history. The document survives today in the Papers of George Washington at the University of Virginia and in the National Archives, contemporaneously reprinted in period newspapers held by the Library of Congress and historical societies across the original thirteen states.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was George Washington’s Circular Letter to the States?

The Circular Letter to the States was a document drafted by George Washington in June 1783, as he prepared to resign his commission as commander in chief of the Continental Army. Addressed to the thirteen state governors, it outlined four essentials for the young republic’s success: unity under a single federal authority, a sacred regard for public justice, establishment of a peacetime military, and a willingness to subordinate local interests to the common good. It is considered a precursor to his 1796 Farewell Address.

How did the Circular Letter affect Native American nations?

The letter did not address Native nations by name, but its four pillars directly concerned them. The call for federal unity responded to the problem of states signing and breaking treaties at will. The “sacred regard to public justice” principle was interpreted by Secretary of War Henry Knox as requiring federal recognition of Indigenous title and law-based treaty-making — reasoning that led to the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1790. The “peace establishment” pillar led to the creation of the Legion of the United States, an army built to fight the Western Confederacy of Native nations in the Ohio Country.

Was Washington’s advice ever fully implemented with regard to Native treaties?

No. While the Constitution of 1787 and the Trade and Intercourse Act of 1790 centralized treaty-making in the federal government, the treaties themselves were frequently negotiated under duress, ratified with disputed provisions, and broken by settler encroachment with little consequence. The republic’s subsequent history — including the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Trail of Tears, and the allotment policies of the Dawes Act of 1887 — demonstrates that Washington’s call for public justice toward Native nations was repeatedly set aside in favor of territorial expansion.

Where is the original Circular Letter preserved?

The original manuscript and draft copies of Washington’s Circular Letter to the States are preserved in the Papers of George Washington at the University of Virginia, at the Library of Congress, and in the collection of the National Archives and Records Administration. Contemporary newspaper reprints from 1783 and 1787 are also held in the newspapers division of the Library of Congress and at various state historical societies.

What was the significance of the letter being reprinted in 1787?

Washington’s Circular Letter was reprinted in newspapers across several states in 1787, on the eve of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The timing was deliberate: the letter’s call for unity under “one federal head” directly framed the debate over replacing the Articles of Confederation with a stronger national government. The Constitution that emerged reserved treaty-making to the federal government, addressing the very failures Washington had identified four years earlier.

Concluding Synthesis on Cultural Legacy and Modern Preservation

The Circular Letter of 1783 is a founding document whose Native dimensions are only recently receiving sustained scholarly attention. Its language of “public justice” continues to be cited in contemporary debates over tribal sovereignty, treaty enforcement, and the return of ancestral lands. The letter reminds us that the founding generation understood — even if it did not act on that understanding — that the stability of the American republic was bound up with its treatment of Native nations. As historians, curators, and Native scholars today argue, the true measure of the republic Washington helped found lies not in the ideals of 1783 but in the long struggle to close the gap between them and the lived outcomes for Indigenous peoples.