Characteristics Of The American Aristocrats

For centuries the people of Europe had been under the strong sway of the aristocracy that existed in European countries, however the development of colonies lead to a different type of aristocracy in the English colonies, the natural aristocracy. Aristocrats had always been the highest social class among European society, thanks to their large amount of wealth that had been passed down from generation to generation. The wealth that was passed down gave these select families massive amounts of influence over not only the common people but of people in higher positions like that of the King. In America this system of inherited wealth didn’t exist and it lead to the development of the natural aristocracy. The natural aristocracy had a huge …show more content…
The best example of this is their leadership during and before the war. Before the war really got started there was a lot of debate about whether or not to get into this war at all. Many of the Southern colonies didn’t want any part of the revolution, if this had happened America never would have formed. However, thanks to the aristocrats the Continental Congress managed to keep the colonies together. Congress may have been relatively powerless but the Congress was at least able to make sure that things ran smoothly during the Revolution. For instance the Congress made the excellent decision to send Benjamin Franklin to negotiate aid from France. If it were up to the common people they would have insisted on fighting the British by themselves, this is mostly due to the amount of animosity the colonists had towards the French. Without the French, the war with Britain would have been extraordinarily hard to win. After the revolution the American aristocrats made the first constitution for the new country, the Articles of Confederation. After its implementation the aristocrats saw how this new document had many flaws with its design and decided to create the Constitution. Thanks to the Constitution the federal government was created and the problems from the Articles were solved. The people upon hearing of this were very angry, they didn’t want the stronger central government the Constitution would create and they saw no problems with the Articles of Confederation. What the common people didn’t realize that the aristocrats did was that a strong central government is needed in a stable country. If not for the Constitution the federal government would have never had enough power to keep the colonies together. The natural aristocracy was very important in the way the revolution progressed and