American Aristocracy

Is there such a thing?

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The aristocracy[1] is historically associated with a "hereditary" or a "ruling" social class. In many states, the aristocracy included the upper class of people (aristocrats) with hereditary rank and titles.[2] In some, such as ancient Greece, ancient Rome, or India, aristocratic status came from belonging to a military class. It has also been common, notably in African societies, for aristocrats to belong to priestly dynasties. Aristocratic status can involve feudal or legal privileges.[3] They are usually below only the monarch of a country or nation in its social hierarchy.[4] In modern European societies, the aristocracy has often coincided with the nobility, a specific class that arose in the Middle Ages, but the term "aristocracy" is sometimes also applied to other elites, and is used as a more general term when describing earlier and non-European societies.[5] Aristocracy may be abolished within a country as the result of a revolution against them, such as the French Revolution.

The term aristocracy derives from the Greek ἀριστοκρατία (aristokratia from ἄριστος (aristos) 'excellent' and κράτος (kratos) 'power').[6] In most cases, aristocratic titles were and are hereditary.

• First estate included the group of all clergy, that is, members of the higher clergy and the lower clergy.
• Second estate has been encapsulated by the nobility. Here too, it did not matter whether they came from a lower or higher nobility or if they were impoverished members.
• Third estate included all nominally free citizens; in some places, free peasants.

The second estate was the nobility. Being wealthy or influential did not automatically make one a noble, and not all nobles were wealthy and influential (aristocratic families have lost their fortunes in various ways, and the concept of the "poor nobleman" is almost as old as nobility itself). Countries without a feudal tradition did not have a nobility as such.

The nobility of a person might be either inherited or earned. Nobility in its most general and strict sense is an acknowledged preeminence that is hereditary: legitimate descendants (or all male descendants, in some societies) of nobles are nobles, unless explicitly stripped of the privilege. The terms aristocrat and aristocracy are a less formal means to refer to persons belonging to this social milieu.

Historically in some cultures, members of an upper class often did not have to work for a living, as they were supported by earned or inherited investments (often real estate), although members of the upper class may have had less actual money than merchants. Upper-class status commonly derived from the social position of one's family and not from one's own achievements or wealth. Much of the population that comprised the upper class consisted of aristocrats, ruling families, titled people, and religious hierarchs. These people were usually born into their status, and historically, there was not much movement across class boundaries. This is to say that it was much harder for an individual to move up in class simply because of the structure of society.

In many countries, the term upper class was intimately associated with hereditary land ownership and titles. Political power was often in the hands of the landowners in many pre-industrial societies (which was one of the causes of the French Revolution), despite there being no legal barriers to land ownership for other social classes. Power began to shift from upper-class landed families to the general population in the early modern age, leading to marital alliances between the two groups, providing the foundation for the modern upper classes in the West. Upper-class landowners in Europe were often also members of the titled nobility, though not necessarily: the prevalence of titles of nobility varied widely from country to country. Some upper classes were almost entirely untitled, for example, the Szlachta of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Before the Age of Absolutism, institutions, such as the church, legislatures, or social elites,[12] restrained monarchical power. Absolutism was characterized by the ending of feudal partitioning, consolidation of power with the monarch, rise of state, rise of professional standing armies, professional bureaucracies, the codification of state laws, and the rise of ideologies that justify the absolutist monarchy. Hence, Absolutism was made possible by new innovations and characterized as a phenomenon of Early Modern Europe, rather than that of the Middle Ages, where the clergy and nobility counterbalanced as a result of mutual rivalry.

ArtI.S9.C8.4 Titles of Nobility and the Constitution

Article I, Section 9, Clause 8:

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

The Constitution’s prohibition on titles of nobility reflects both the American aversion to aristocracy1 and the republican character of the government established by the Constitution.2 The Clause thus complements other constitutional provisions—most notably the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments—that prohibit invidious governmental distinctions between classes of American citizens.3

The Articles of Confederation4 and many Revolutionary-era state constitutions contained prohibitions of titles of nobility and other systems of hereditary privilege.5 The federal Title of Nobility Clause substantially follows the Articles’ prohibition and was not a subject of significant debate at the Constitutional Convention.6 As James Madison observed in the Federalist No. 44: The prohibition with respect to titles of nobility is copied from the articles of Confederation and needs no comment.7 Alexander Hamilton, in the Federalist No. 84, was only slightly more loquacious:

Nothing need be said to illustrate the importance of the prohibition of titles of nobility. This may truly be denominated the corner-stone of republican government; for so long as they are excluded, there can never be serious danger that the government will be any other than that of the people.8.

Very few courts have had occasion to interpret the meaning of the federal Title of Nobility Clause.9 The Supreme Court has only discussed the Title of Nobility Clause in passing, as when Justices cite the Clause to make a rhetorical point in a concurring or dissenting opinion.10

How broadly to understand the Title of Nobility Clause’s prohibition thus remains an open, if perhaps academic, question. On a narrow reading, the Clause merely prohibits a federal system of hereditary privilege along the lines of the British aristocratic system.11 More broadly understood, the Clause could preclude other governmental grants of enduring favor or disfavor to particular classes based on birth or other non-merit-based criteria.12 Some commentators have suggested, for example, that the Title of Nobility Clause might forbid admission preferences for legacy students at state universities or certain benefits that accompany receipt of the Medal of Honor.13 After the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, challenges to governmental favoritism based on class, race, or other bases have usually relied on the Equal Protection Clause.14

American gentry

The American gentry were wealthy landowning members of the American upper class in the colonial South.

Historians generally use the term "gentry" to refer to the moneyed planter class in the American South prior to the American Revolution. Typically, large scale landowners rented out farms to white tenant farmers. North of Maryland, there were few large comparable rural estates, except in the Dutch domains in the Hudson Valley of New York.[1][2]

see related project, American Gentry

"Yes, We Have an Aristocracy in America—and It’s Thriving." < motherjones.com > (June 17, 2021) A new report shows how dynasties rake it in at everyone else’s expense.

Early in the 19th century, not long after a bunch of British colonies became the United States of America, an aging John Adams and his friend and rival Thomas Jefferson exchanged dozens of letters in which they debated the state of aristocracy in the new republic. The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph Ellis recounted this exchange in his 2018 book, American Dialogue, which Mother Jones excerpted. Ellis writes:

Adams’ chief heresy was his direct refutation of Jefferson’s most famous words, that “all men are created equal.” Perhaps in some lofty humanistic sense this was true, Adams wrote, but “Inequalities of Mind and Body are so established by God Almighty in the constitution of Human Nature that no Art or policy can ever plain them down to a level.” Aristocracies, he therefore insisted, were an inevitable and permanent fixture in all human societies—including the young republic he and Jefferson had helped into being.

Jefferson wrote back to suggest his friend’s argument was true of Europe, where feudal privileges, inherited titles, and limited economic opportunities created conditions that sustained class distinctions. In America, though, the absence of laws such as primogeniture and entail, and the existence of an unspoiled continent, meant “everyone may have land to labor for himself as he chooses,” and thus enduring elites were unlikely here. Given such favorable conditions, Jefferson argued, it was reasonable to expect that “rank, and birth, and tinsel-aristocracy will finally shrink into insignificance,” resulting in a roughly egalitarian, middle-class society.

Adams was unconvinced. “No Romance could be more amusing,” he replied, than the belief that the United States would prove an exception to the dominant pattern of economic inequality throughout history. “As long as Property exists,” he observed, “it will accumulate in Individuals and Families…the Snow ball will grow as it rolls.”

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Conclusion

It appears that the answer to the question, "is there such a thing as an American aristocracy?" is yes, there is: wealth, forming an upper-class, which is a non-traditional definition; in other times and places, aristocracy is hereditary only.

But it is not the same as

• "American gentry" (land based).
• "Nobility" (inherited titles) ... as titles of nobility are in fact prohibited by the Constitution.
• "Dynasty"... wealth may be current and not inherited.

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Source: The Radicalism of the American Revolution. By Gordon S. Wood. Page 112. < GoogleBooks >

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References

• Ruggiu, François-Joseph. "Extraction, wealth and industry: The ideas of noblesse and of gentility in the English and French Atlantics (17th–18th centuries)." History of European Ideas 34.4 (2008): 444-455 online[dead link]
• Schlesinger, Arthur M. “The Aristocracy in Colonial America.” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 74, 1962, pp. 3–21. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25080556