THE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI: How a select group of patriots sought power for themselves and ended up empowering an entire nation – and how another group works to secure power for themselves.
“There is nothing new except what has been forgotten” – Marie AntoinetteOctober 30, 2014
THE AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE COUNCIL
There have been reports in the news of late documenting corporations that have decided to sever ties to ALEC, the much-disparaged American Legislative Exchange Council.
Companies such as Amazon, Wal-Mart, Microsoft and even ConocoPhillips are the latest in what’s beginning to look like a mass exodus. According to the Center for Media and Democracy’s SourceWatch website, 93 corporations and 19 non-profits have cut ties with the cookie-cutter, boilerplate approach to governing that ALEC espouses.
The latest company to defect ALEC is Google. In an article posted on the Huffington Post, Elliott Negin, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, reports that Google’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, left the syndicate over the group’s stand on climate change, saying they lie about the phenomena and added that ALEC is “making the world a much worse place”.
Hearing those words invoked a statement made by someone with even more clout than Schmidt’s about another pressure group that sprang up during the first iteration of the ‘American Experiment’ - before the nation ratified its current Constitution – The Society of the Cincinnati – the very first special-interest pressure group ever in the history of the newly minted United States of America.
THE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI
The Society, open only
to men (American and French), who fought in the War for Independence, their eldest
sons, and certain Honorary members, formed in 1783, ostensibly to provide the
members the means of remaining in contact with one another and to set up a fund
to give financial assistance to members, widows, and orphans of members who’ve
fallen on hard times.
But, like too many special-interest
groups, the outward-facing declarations of purpose mask the real intention for
the group’s existence.
Their strategy was to place in each state a local
branch of the Society. Various state legislatures took objection to this
private group involving themselves in state matters. Not alone in their
concern, the Massachusetts legislature condemned the Society for “promoting certain
important publick [sic] and national purposes” that the people of
Massachusetts, as well as the new country, had set up government bodies to do
the people’s work and that the Society was trying to displace those legitimate
bodies, or at minimum, exert undue influence on them[i].
Baron Friedrich Wilhelm
Augustus von Steuben, a founding member of the Society, solicited his old
commander, Prince Henry of Prussia, to assume an American crown[ii].
Colonel Lewis Nicola had asked General Washington - the Society’s first
President General – to accept the Crown[iii].
Washington’s rebuke of Nicola was so stringent that the Colonel apologized
three times for this indiscretion.
One issue that fomented
the formation of the Cincinnati – the publicly stated reason - was that of war
pensions. Congress was sluggish – if not outright disinterested in settling the
debt rightfully owed to men like Major General Henry Knox (who first proposed
the Society and whom Fort Knox is named for) and a veritable who’s who of
famous American freedom fighters.
General Knox sent to
Benjamin Lincoln, then Secretary of War, a letter which contained something of
a veiled threat to violence, lest the veteran’s receive their promised
pensions:
“The expectations of the army, from the drummer to the highest officers, are so keen for some pay that I shudder at the idea of their not receiving it. The utmost sufferance upon that head has arrived. To attempt to lengthen it will undoubtedly occasion commotions”.[iv]
A
Confederation Confounded
The soldiers had been promised a pension of 1/2 of their pay by rank for life, which was later changed – ‘commuted’- to a one-time payment of 5 month's full pay. The (main) problem wasn’t the amount to be paid, the problem was the Congress didn’t have the money. Under the Articles of Confederation, the Congress had virtually no power to compel the several States to remit taxes to the federal government.
The pensions were merely pretext, at least for those men of means who created the Society. As Mrs. Mercy Warren, writing in “History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution” noted, it seemed hardly likely that men who could afford to voluntarily donate one month’s salary (based on military rank) to the Society – a requirement for membership – could be considered in desperate need.
Warren wasn’t alone in her concern about the Society. Aedanus Burke, a 'Chief Justice' of the State of South Carolina, writing under ‘Cassius’, was most outspoken regarding the true intent of the Cincinnati. Burke saw the group as an instrument to usurp power and control the political direction – and the wealth – of the nation[v].
Samuel Adams thought the Society was “the deepest piece of cunning yet attempted[vi]”. Thomas Jefferson, writing to Washington in November of 1786, predicted “it will certainly come, when a single fibre [sic] of this institution will produce an hereditary aristocracy which will change the form of our government from the best to the worst in the world[vii]”.
Inherent to the structure the Society adopted – a central or ‘federal’ body that brought together chapters from each newly formed State – as well as a chapter in France – would act as a figurehead to the local branches – where the real power resided.
Critics of the Society suggested that the reason for this was to lobby the individual state’s legislature's and guide their lawmaking. Samuel Osgood[viii], in a letter to Stephen Higginson dated December 14, 1783 accused the Society of positioning members in state legislatures’ and the Congress with the purpose of ‘watching over them’ and the bills presented to the lawmakers, much like ALEC does today.
It is interesting to note that ALEC also permits interests outside of the United States membership in their project to dictate American State laws[ix].
For these reasons and more, politicians felt the need to disassociate themselves from the Society, for fear that linkage would cost them political posts.
Forming a More Perfect Union
While it is problematic to suggest that the activities of members of the Society of the Cincinnati were directly responsible for certain inclusions in the new Constitution created in 1787, it’s hard not to see that elements were at minimum influenced by the Society.
That Congress have the power to lay taxes enabled the payment of military pensions by the federal government, the prohibition of titles of nobility, that bills to raise revenue be introduced in the House all were directly or indirectly prompted by the same events that lead to the formation, and provoked criticism, of the Society.
After the States ratified the new Constitution, the threat of an aristocracy (at least a hereditary aristocracy) had passed and the country evaded anarchy as well. However, without missing a beat, members of the Cincinnati immediately sprang into action and began lobbying President Washington for positions in the government.
Washington accommodated the Society by nominating 15 members (of 35 appointments to be made) of the various State Societies. Members held many important posts: President, Secretary of War, Secretary of the Treasury, Attorney General, and Supreme Court Justice, among them[x].
Eroding the Union
By definition, members of ALEC that are not representing private corporate interests must be sitting or former members of law making bodies. This is for the same reasons that the Cincinnati required former military service of their non-honorary members: influence.
After many years of manipulating state laws to favor corporate interest above the interests of the citizenry, ALEC is learning what the Society of the Cincinnati learned: that too much influence can attract unwanted attention and put at risk the real goals of the enterprise.
By the early 1800’s the Society of the Cincinnati was in decline. It had overreached, stumbled, and fell.
The nation avoided further war when the efforts of the Cincinnati failed to establish a military aristocracy, yet the country has been caught up in an undeclared war brought on by another group seeking to consolidate power for the exclusive benefit of its private non-elected members.
We may be witnessing the same dynamic with respect to the American Legislative Exchange Council.
FURTHER READING
“The Society of the Cincinnati: Conspiracy Theory in the Early American Republic” by Markus Hunemorder, GHI Bulletin No. 31 Fall 2002.
“The Works of John Adams”, Charles F. Adams, Little, Brown & Co., Boston 1851.
“The Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, Julian P. Boyd, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1950.
“Writings of George Washington”, J. B. Russell, 1834.
[i] Providence Gazette, April 3, 1784.
[ii] Minor Myers “Liberty without Anarchy: A History of the Society of the Cincinnati”, University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1983.
[iii] Richard Frank Saunders, Jr. “The Origin and early History of the Society of the Cincinnati: The Oldest Hereditary and Patriotic Association in the United States”, University of Georgia Thesis, 1970.
[iv] Henry Knox to Benjamin Lincoln, December 20, 1782, Henry Knox Papers.
[v] Aedanus Burke (Cassuis) "Considerations on the Society or Order of the Cincinnati, Lately Instituted By the Major Generals, Brigadier Generals, and other Officers of the American Army" and
Honore-Gabriel de Riquetti, comte de Mirabeau “Considerations sur L’Ordre de Cincinnatus, ou Imitation d’un pamphlet anglo-americain”. Sébastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort is given as joint author by Quérard and Barbier. cf. also Oeuvres choisies de N. Chamfort, 1892, t. 1, p. xxiv, where Chamfort is said to be the real author. Based on a pamphlet entitled "Considerations on the Society or Order of Cincinnatus," issued in Philadelphia, 1783. It was signed "Cassius" and is supposed to have been written by Ædanus Burke. The notes on Price's Observations were largely the work of G. J. B. Target. cf. Mémoires de Mirabeau, 1834-35, t.4, p. 160. French.
Honore-Gabriel de Riquetti, comte de Mirabeau “Considerations sur L’Ordre de Cincinnatus, ou Imitation d’un pamphlet anglo-americain”. Sébastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort is given as joint author by Quérard and Barbier. cf. also Oeuvres choisies de N. Chamfort, 1892, t. 1, p. xxiv, where Chamfort is said to be the real author. Based on a pamphlet entitled "Considerations on the Society or Order of Cincinnatus," issued in Philadelphia, 1783. It was signed "Cassius" and is supposed to have been written by Ædanus Burke. The notes on Price's Observations were largely the work of G. J. B. Target. cf. Mémoires de Mirabeau, 1834-35, t.4, p. 160. French.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] Edgar Erskine Hume “General Washington’s Correspondence Concerning the Society of the Cincinnati”, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1941.
[viii] Edmund Cody Burnett “Letters of Members of the Continental Congress”, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1921.
[ix] American Legislative Exchange Council By-Laws, 2007.
[x] Ibid.
