(GEORGE WASHINGTON). THEODORE FOSTER. UNITED STATES CHRONICLE. PROVIDENCE: 23 JANUARY 1800

Bifolium (18 3/4 x 11 5/8 in.; 456 x 297 mm). 4 pp., extracted from a bound run of the paper; previous fold, some staining.

Manuscript Eulogy to George Washington by U.S. Senator Theodore Foster of Rhode Island. Issued five weeks after Washington’s death, this newspaper served as the tablet for the handwritten reflections of a sitting Senator on the loss of the nation’s first President. It is clear from his words that the people of the nation he helped create—and individual Senators—are still struggling with Washington’s death. In Foster’s hand in the upper right margin is his own original and unpublished verse:

"Mother & nurse of all ye arts Agriculture. Let us now attend to some of those
paternal admonitions contained in his last address.

We have so long been accustomed to consider him as our Bulwark (partly washed out) and counsellor
in times of difficulty, that it is with painful emotions we realize
the awful event of his dissolution O Washington Wash"

Senator Foster's line "paternal Admonitions" references Washington’s Farewell Address, given several years prior on September 19, 1796. On page 2, this issue includes an excerpt from a letter of condolence Washington himself wrote to one of the sons of Governor Jonathan Trumbull (1710-1785), on the death of his father.