But we are AMERICA! We are #1! We should marry our king off to the #1 princess from the #1 dynasty with the #1 chin! USA! USA! USA!
Several things are mixed here. Community (town) government is not same as a state legislature. They took different forms in New England and did use town meetings to argue out the laws and taxes and other affairs. The Massachusetts Great and General Court, which became the House of Representatives, opened voting to all free members of the Puritan Church. Each community sent two delegates, making for a very large body that reached over 700.
The Mass. Constitution of 1780 put in the monetary restriction, an annual income of 3 pounds or an estate of 60 pounds. The conversion is maddening, because all historic numbers are now given in dollars, but I found that skilled workers made $12-15 per year. That probably crossed the line so that they could vote.
Farmers seldom had that kind of cash, which resulted in the revolts of western Mass. farmers against the state. But those grievances were worked out in town meetings first.
The structuring of American government to fit the elites is now standard lore. The situation was worse down in Jefferson’s utopia of small farmers in the South. See Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America for details.
However, note that no such voting restrictions were written into the Constitution. States were allowed to set their own eligibility laws. By the early 1820s, the Yankee states had started to widen the voting base to mirror their town bases. This influence carried over into the Northwest Territory states. (For an interesting argument about the influence of Northeast Yankees, see American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, by Colin Woodward.)
“White suffrage” was the norm in the North by the Civil War. The elites still controlled most governments, though, except where ethnic machines held power. Wealthy elites have always controlled the country, except for the rare exceptions when the masses revolted. Those exceptions eventually constituted a large pile that we now take as the norm, but we forget how difficult it was to get here.
A question: the founding fathers were, to one degree or another, obsessed with the Roman Republic. Did they strive to found a republic because they were obsessed with Rome, or did they become obsessed with Rome once they decided to found a public?
Yeah, Martha wasn’t the one who couldn’t produce offspring.
(It’s usually speculated that an ailment made George sterile)
They were obsessed with Rome because the British were obsessed by Rome.
The dirty little secret about our “new” country is that every idea, philosophy or policy came directly from Europe, and almost entirely from England. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall’s first volume was published in 1776. Everybody read it.
Of course, compared to England, hardy any books were published in America to draw new ideas from. It took a lot of time before that wasn’t true.
Here’s an article that summarizes some of the influences on the founding fathers. Note that it wasn’t just the Romans but the Greeks to some extent as well.
The Enlightenment writers were the main contemporary influencers. And not just English but French to a significant extent.
Note that the English also had a counter-effect as well. The classism of England was a big turnoff to many, esp. Franklin.
Well, yeah - the American Revolution was very much an English revolution. One could even say that it was the final chapter of the English Civil War.
That’s my impression, or at least some of the thinking seems to bear echoes of the complaints against James II and the revolution of 1688
Although the obsession with Greek and Roman models goes back further. It’s pretty clear that a lot of the Founding Fathers read Joseph Addison’s 1712 plat Cato – we’re still familiar with quotations from it. “Give me liberty or give me death”, “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country”.
Washington modeled himself on Cato, the “ideal Roman”, and took to heart the example of Cincinnatus. His turning down a virtually monarchical role was pure Cincinnatus, and the Society of the Cincinnati (still in existence) was named after that Roman statesman.
Getting Washington to marry a “fertile princess”, Hapsburg or otherwise, wouldn’t have helped. Martha Washington had children by a prior marriage, but not with George. He was pretty clearly the sterile on, whether from infection (as noted above) or other reason isn’t clear.
I’d say it was the latter. There’s no reason why a bunch of mostly British-descended Americans would have felt a cultural connection with Rome. They didn’t see Rome as being part of their national history anymore than they did France or Spain.
So if they chose to cite Rome as a role model it was because Rome was providing a precedent they already wished to follow. They wanted to establish a republic so they looked around for a historical republic.
Well, Napoléon married a Habsburg princess, Marie Louise, in 1810, after divorcing Joséphine, and this certainly did not absorb France into the Habsburg empire, or prevent Austria from joining the anti-French coalition in 1813. So I don’t think such an absorption would have been all that likely.
The Romans weren’t exactly unfamiliar with the problem of childless Emperors. Starting with Augustus (who was himself Julius Caesar’s adopted son), they just adopted their preferred heir as their own son. In Augustus’s case, that was his wife’s son by her previous marriage. The Swedes would do the same in 1810 when the childless Charles XIII needed an heir.
Educated American men’s knowledge of ancient Rome wasn’t based on any single work. Most of them had read Caesar, Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius etc., often in the original Latin.
Marie Louise renounced her claims to the Habsburg territories, specifically to avoid any personal union of France and Austria under any offspring from the marriage. Royal marriages often included such a condition. It was a pretty obvious safeguard. Not that these could never be challenged. See various ‘Wars of the [insert name] Succession’ passim.
‘We…are Greeks in this American empire. You will find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans – great big vulgar, bustling people, more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues, but also more corrupt. We must run AFHQ. (Allied Forces Head Quarters) as the Greeks ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius.’ - Harold MacMillan.
(Not the first person to make the analogy)
Latin and Greek were required subjects in the British system of public schools (which meant private schools for the elite). The Americans copied that more or less exactly.
During its early years, the College offered a classic academic course based on the English university model, but consistent with the Puritan philosophy of the first colonists. The mission of the College, according to the 1650 Charter, was: “the advancement of all good literature, artes, and Sciences.” Latin was the language of instruction (although the Latin speaking requirement was not renewed in the College Laws of 1692). Students were expected to arrive at Harvard well-versed in Latin grammar and, once enrolled, followed a prescribed course of studies in Latin, Greek and Hebrew; the examination of classical languages through histories and drama providing the base for scholarly pursuits.
Not every Founder went to college. Even so, through private tutoring or hours spent at candlelight, they sought to provide themselves with the language of common discourse, which meant both Latin and the Roman writers and the modern writers who used the Romans (and Greeks) as their models.
Right. And my theory is that, the fact that these people knew who Pericles and Cato even were, made them more predisposed towards the idea of some kind of democracy than the vast majority of their contemporaries.
In the 1780s there was a nice little Republic in Corsica. This may have had some influence. My evidence for this is one of its founders was a man named Paoli and there is a western suburb of Philadelphia named Paoli that was apparently named for him. That republic was destroyed by a man named Bonaparte, Nap’s father, I believe.
Not to mention that the Netherlands were a republic at the time, and Venice - while much diminished - had been a republic for over a thousand years. The concept of an (oligarchic) republic was not alien to Europeans of the late 18th Century.
This thought experiment ending with Bill Clinton in his 30th year as president is fun given the fact he is four years younger than Joe Biden.
If Bill Clinton dies between today and January 20, 2025, King William I will be succeeded by King Joseph I.
If he dies between January 20, 2025 and before 2029 (or 2033), King William I will be succeeded by Queen Kamala I or King Donald I.