"Morgan's book shows what the lives of our new educated, moneyed elite are like, and it's far from clear to me that they are doing anyone much good--including, amazingly enough, themselves." DK
Several kinds of things occur to me, re a new moneyed elite doing anyone any good.
Our system was based mainly on a British rural lower gentry ideal, a country ideal. It mimicked the rural lower gentry in England.
The large coastal towns had large merchants, not looked upon favorably by other powerful rural or other town interests, as well as a few artisans and craftsmen and shop owners. Some light industry. Not much.
A lot of religious and political unrest at all times.
Of course colonial Americans rejected both aristocracy, established church, and Crown.
They were left with little social, religious, or political hierarchy, really, after a certain point, and thus little social or political structure.
Of course they had state, local, and federal representatives, which had started out composed of the best people, as the saying went. They had a property ownership requirement to vote. They didn't trust democracy, even, really. And why should they?
Barbara Tuchman said that the gentry, and the town brahmins, originally intended under the Constitution to govern, had already abandoned direct personal involvement in government as politicians by 1830, around the time of the accession of Jackson.
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