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Entry: Wolfe's Howl Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/wolfes_folly#2049 Post contents: Mr. Wheeler, the Founders did not repudiate aristocracy. Washington, Jefferson, Peyton Randolph, Charles Pinckney and many other founders were members of the gentry class with family connections to titled nobility which are well documented. They proudly used their armorial bearings on their silver, china, bookplates, and other personal possessions. They had no desire to eliminate social distinctions and pursued nothing like the Jacobins' deliberate program of effacing or destroying displays of coat-armor. Some states, including Massachusetts, preserved the legal institutions of primogeniture and entail well into the nineteenth century. There was, to be sure, a reaction against titles of nobility, but this has to be placed in the context of the eighteenth-century practice instituted by Walpole of ministries awarding them to "placemen" on the basis of political loyalty rather than as a recognition of any real merit or service to the monarch. Particularly in the South, the idea of aristocracy was admired. The franchise was not promiscuously extended but remained essentially as it was before American independence for fifty years or more - confined to those who met a property qualification. Universal manhood suffrage did not become the norm until after the War Between the States, and even then was often restricted to those who had paid a poll tax. Many American states had established churches which persisted for years after the Revolution. The First Amendment's establishment clause was NOT meant to create a Jacobinical policy of "laïcité" for the United States. It was intended to protect the established churches in the several states from Federal interference. Connecticut, for example, had an established (Calvinist) state church until 1818. Massachusetts had one until 1833. Virginia's established Anglican church was disestablished under Jefferson, but against the strong protests of other Founders who wished to retain it, such as Patrick Henry. The current interpretation of the establishment clause is a perversion of the Framers' original intent, and should not be imputed to them. You seem to have a bee in your bonnet about Freemasonry. I shall neither defend nor condemn it here, but will merely ask - in what significant way did it influence the public conduct of (for example) Paul Revere or George Washington, that it did not influence that of the Lord Cornwallis or the duke of Sussex? Far too much has been made (often by Masons) of Freemasonry's rôle in the American Revolution. Sent at: 2008 07 08