Political Parties and Washington's Farewell Address

            While talking about political parties, and how they are becoming so polarized that our government is becoming gridlocked, I began thinking about Washington's Farewell Address. In the address, Washington specifically stated that America should strive to prevent the formation of political parties because the unity of America was important, and we shouldn't let political parties divide us (Here and Here). However, despite the first president's best attempts, political parties were already forming under his presidency and only continued to grow once he left the office. In fact, now political parties are so ingrained into America's political system and add such structure to the election, that I'm not sure what we would do without them (Interesting article here). This makes me wonder what Washington was thinking. He wouldn't have been so naive about politics (He was a president after all), to think that America would somehow be able to unite and not divide and form political parties. Separate parties were going to form: that's just how things naturally go. People who believe certain things gravitate towards those who believe either similar or the same things, and eventually, enough of these people get together and decide that they want other people to know what they believe in, and either influence current policy or convince others to join them. So Washington must have known that there were the first inklings of political divide under his presidency and with his colleagues and known that these would eventually develop into full parties.
              Was the warning in the address just a last-ditch attempt at reminding the people and the government of the dangers of political parties, in hopes that they would try and tread more carefully for at least a little while? Clearly, by putting it in his address, Washington knew that these divides were in real danger of coming to fruition in the near future, especially because he also noted to not try and divide America by geological differences. He could see the writing on the wall and the natural divisions in interest between the North and South because of their geological differences and industrial divides and seemed to want to warn against dividing America in this way. These political and somewhat geological differences do somewhat still hold to this day, with people in different regions stereotyping those in other opposing areas of America.
             Regardless of what Washington hoped to do with the address and his warning in it, he clearly saw the dangers that political parties could have. I don't think he could have ever predicted the effects to the extent we are facing today, but maybe we should have tried to listen to his advice, despite how inevitable a strong division in ideas was.