In elementary school our mushy 70s brains were taught that the God-ordained, glorious and forward-thinking Founding Fathers wanted a republic instead of a monarchy because American Exceptionalism (or something). Of course, history is more nuanced than what’s taught to elementary school children, and much of the unsavory portion is whitewashed and/or swept under the rug.
Nevertheless, did any of the Founding Fathers advocate for a hereditary monarchy? And if so, whom would they have wanted for King (if not the person who was doing the advocating, of course)?
A brief look at Wiki says that Alexander Hamilton wanted an elective monarch. Lin-Manuel appears to have left that bit out of the musical.
In answer to the o.p., Nathaniel Gorham, 6th President of the Continental Congress, tried to recruit Henry, a Hohenzollern prince who was a son of Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia and younger brother of Friedrich II (commonly known as “Frederick the Great”) , to become a king to the then fledgling United States of America. Henry declined, correctly perceiving that the former colonies would chafe under the yoke of another monarch and the distance would make it all but impossible to call upon military or political aid from his family.
“American Exceptionalism” was not then a thing, and while the Founders were cognizant of the wealth of resources that the “untouched wilderness” and bountiful arable land offered the newly united polities, few if any had the expectation that the United States would become a global power to dwarf the British, French, Spanish, or Dutch colonial empires. The Founders simply wanted political freedom and a representative (of landed white men, at least) government along the treatises of Locke, Rousseau, et al, and freed of hereditary royalty elected by their kindred with lifetime tenure.
Though not advocating a monarchy per se, Hamilton thought the presidency should be a lifetime gig. And John Adams thought the President should be referred to as “His Majesty.” I remember from public school History a story that Washington was offered the title “King” and turned it down. In subsequent years I’ve discovered that much of what was taught in public school History was whitewashed bulls–t.
I could well be misremembering, but didn’t TJ say something about all the armies of Europe being unable to take a drink from the Mississippi if America didn’t want them to?
Fair enough. And indeed it looks like Lincoln said that (and about the Ohio, not the Mississippi) so it would have been when America was quite a bit more established. I sure did misremember!
George had no “legitimate issue”, which, assuming that our hypothetical United Kingdom of the Americas had decided to base its monarchy on the British one, would have quickly become a problem.
So I’ve always wondered why this wasn’t the case. I mean the default answer for the next couple of centuries for what to replace a deposed regime, or what kind of government a newly independent region should have, was constitutional monarch of some kind, including the two revolutions in England proceeding the American War of Independence (the restoration and the glorious revolution)
Why wasn’t a constitutional monarchy at least a strong contender if not the default choice?
Currently reading The Hamilton Scheme by William Hogeland and yes, at one point Hamilton argued for a federal leader to be a monarch, when they were debating what form the government should take.
Hamilton and his mentors were basically speculators in the heavily depreciated paper debt that emerged from the Revolution and the chaos of the Articles of Confederation. Everything was mostly paid with paper IOU’s that became more worthless over time. Basically, the Congress had no taxation power, the states weren’t in a hurry to bail them out, the soldiers, suppliers, etc. were paid with worthless paper - the “Articles of Confederation” didn’t work was the simple bit taught in school today.
Hamilton’s scheme was to cement the federal government as supreme, and even if possible do away with or emasculate the states. To do so, there were several things that needed to happen - a federal tax, federally administered with the means to collect; a central bank to administer the currency and finance federal projects, and an executive elected independent of the states’ control. (of course, the central bank would then essay to pay off at face value with interest that outstanding debt that speculators like his friends had bought at firesale prices from deperate poor people)
The famous whiskey rebellion was Hamilton’s deliberate scheme to overprice the tax on distilling for smaller producers, so as to create concentrated large industries. He was allegedly working mainly on behalf of his mentors in the merchant class of NYC and Philadelphia, wanted to promote a transforation of the USA to a factory economy like Britain was becoming. .
That’s a deep question, answerable only by a book-length delving into the reading and philosophies of the Founders. The shortest answer I can give is that the colonies had 150 years of historic experience of self-rule. They had Royal Governors who presumably did the bidding of the king, but often satisfied their own needs first, but these officers were seen as irritants who didn’t understand the ways or means of the New World.
In New England especially, the communities developed the type of government by town meeting without a royal ruler that history textbooks magnified into a symbol of American government even though it was not common elsewhere. The South used a plutocratic form of government by a small segment of the rich that was equally hostile to outside interference. The other colonies had their own customs but the bottom line was similar. They felt their little worlds ran best with the governments they were used to, without any single absolute ruler. One can see this in the Articles of Confederation, which weakened any federal government to a point where it allied the 13 fiefdoms but gave them the freedom to rule themselves without any form of central ruler.
When the Articles manifestly failed utterly, local powers were forced to concede that a federalist association was necessary. What they wound up with was shaped by the colony’s histories and was bolstered by philosophies of democracy and freedom that were being felt by the elites in the 18th century. Many of them were anti-monarchical, a sentiment that barely scraped by when the Constitution was written.
I once figured out who the Presidents would have been if it had been a lifetime office. I assumed that lifespans remained unchanged and that whoever was the President at the time in real history would have been the one elected when the previous President died.
George Washington 1789-1799
John Adams 1799-1826
John Quincy Adams 1826-1848
James Polk 1848-1849
Zachary Taylor 1849-1850
Millard Fillmore 1850-1874
Ulysses Grant 1874-1885
Grover Cleveland 1885-1908
Theodore Roosevelt 1908-1919
Woodrow Wilson 1919-1924
Calvin Coolidge 1924-1933
Herbert Hoover 1933-1964
Lyndon Johnson 1964-1973
Richard Nixon 1973-1994
Bill Clinton 1994-Present
For life (wink, wink; nudge, nudge)? You’re not allowed to resign/abdicate?
I do not think Washington was ever in favour of being “King” or any other form of monarchy. For example, in his speech, explaining how political parties are not cool, he contrasts their place in “Governments of a Monarchical cast” versus popular republics, so we can conclude he thought of the USA as the latter:
There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the Administration of the Government and serve to keep alive the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true—and in Governments of a Monarchical cast Patriotism may look with endulgence, if not with favour, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate & assuage it. A fire not to be quenched; it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest instead of warming it should consume.
Another interesting question is; if George Washington had become King George I, who would be our lawful king today?
According to Redditor who did the legwork a few years ago, we’d currently be living in the reign of King Merle II, but that’s assuming that the throne passed from George I to his stepson George II, rather than to his nephew Thornton I via his brother Samuel who predeceased him.
Of course, if Washington had become a monarch it’s entirely possible Congress coupd have convinced him to ditch Martha and shack up with some fertile Hapsburg duchess to produce a legitimate heir, and then we’re really in the woods.
(Also, the above timeline has Robert E. Lee as Prince Consort during the Civil War, which would have made things interesting to say the least.)
In the book Hamilton Scheme the author points out that state legislatures were made up by a vote of the property-owning class; those who owned no property were excluded. The government was by and for the rich elite. During the revolution, rioting working class managed to change the Pennsylvania constitution so every (free) man had a vote, but that got changed back not long after. This was the same criteria for voting for the British parliament. The revolution was driven by the propertied class (plantation farmers and merchants) who felt that they should have the same say as the British parliament over the taxes imposed on them.
In fact, the richer propertied class were well aware that allowing the great unwashed to vote would result in laws that hurt the rich - progressive taxes, limits on land holdings, on commercial activity that resulted in the rich squeezing out the small farmers… universal voting would prevent the government using its powers to advance the cause of the rich people over the poor. The fear, as Tytler said:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.
So they were not unfamiliar or unfriendly to a monarchical system. They recognized after the chaos of the Articles of Confederation how important a stronger central government needed to be. Just, they wanted the representatives of the upper class to have control over what the ruler could do. And the individual states were jealous of giving power away to the central government. (Hence te amendment that all unenumerated powers belong to the states)
This YouTuber looked into it as well. I don’t know if he landed on King Merle II in any of the scenarios he explored.
This is an interesting line of though. Were there any available fertile Hapsburg duchesses to marry off to King George I c. 1789? Also, if I know anything about monarchical fiefdoms (which I do extensively thanks to Game of Thrones, Dune, and House of the Dragon wink wink), a marriage between two noble Houses creates an alliance. Would that have meant that the U.S. and (wherever our hypothetical Hapsburg duchess comes from) would have entered into a de facto alliance?
More likely it would mean the eventual absorption of the United States into the Hapsburg “Empire”.
Perhaps this would have led to much stronger ties between the fledgeling United States and the Austrian empire. If the US joins the Central Powers then the First World War could have seen action along the American/Canadian border.