The soul of republicanism: no hereditary political power or office

Maier reports Washington's qualms about the Society of the Cincinnati in her prologue.

They had made membership in this influential body, an association of veteran officers of the Continental Army and Navy, hereditary, provoking Aedanus Burke to object that this "would lead to creation of an hereditary aristocracy, which was totally at odds with the republican system established by the Revolution," she says.

Later in the prologue, Maier writes of the situation in 1786, "The very future of the republic - a government without hereditary rulers, in which all power came from the people - seemed in doubt."

Ratification.

The Society became and remains hereditary, all the same, like the DAR.

But Burke's fear, though proved wrong, illuminates the meaning of republicanism in the America of that time, as does Maier's remark.

But note, too, the absence of offices reserved for clergy and, in the eventual constitution, of establishment.

Indeed there is no mention of God in it, and religion is only mentioned, in the unamended version, to exclude religious tests.