The topic of elites, any elites really, throughout American history, is a can of worms.
It seemed necessary, to me, to go back to the beginning, and before the beginning, and to try to understand how the concept of classes, if any, developed here, in comparison and contrast with, as well as in tandem with and in isolation from, Europe, in the first place.
I don't know if one can get a clear sense of this history by reading say Tocqueville.
I have been reading Palmer, and before that several other authors, Doyle for example, as background. There are of course countless books on these topics. Bailyn, Ideological Origins, as well as his shorter work on American Politics, is a good introduction to this as well, more political than social or class history. Palmer has a very helpful chapter, "Democracy Native and Imported", which contains some very useful insights on these matters regarding the founders, party origins, and class notions.
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