I just learned some interesting history about Cincinnati, Ohio. Apparently the city was named in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati, a patriotic organization dating back to the Revolutionary War. This society still exists today. To be a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, one must be descended from a soldier who fought in the Revolutionary War. Their website reads:

The Society of the Cincinnati is the oldest private patriotic organization in the United States. It was founded by the officers of the Continental army and navy and their counterparts in the French army and navy who had served in the American Revolutionary War. This unique organization is dedicated to perpetuating the memory of the American Revolution.

In the years following the American Revolution, this society had a great deal of influence. Apparently, during the Continental Congress, it was proposed that the President be elected by the Society of the Cincinnati, rather than popular vote. From the Madison Debates:

Elbridge Gerry: A popular election in this case is radically vicious. The ignorance of the people would put it in the power of some one set of men dispersed through the Union & acting in Concert to delude them into any appointment. He observed that such a Society of men existed in the Order of the Cincinnati. They are respectable, United, and influential. They will in fact elect the chief Magistrate in every instance, if the election be referred to the people. [Gerry''s] respect for the characters composing this Society could not blind him to the danger & impropriety of throwing such a power into their hands.

Thomas Jefferson and others were very concerned that this society made up of hereditary elites was setting out to create an aristocratic class and would undermine the Constitution. He was very clear in his disapproval. In 1786, he wrote to James Madison the following:

the society of the Cincinnati, a self-created one, carving out for itself hereditary distinctions, lowering over our Constitution eternally, meeting together in all parts of the Union, periodically, with closed doors, accumulating a capital in their separate treasury, corresponding secretly & regularly, & of which society the very persons denouncing the democrats are themselves the fathers, founders, & high officers. Their sight must be perfectly dazzled by the glittering of crowns & coronets, not to see the extravagance of the proposition to suppress the friends of general freedom, while those who wish to confine that freedom to the few, are permitted to go on in their principles & practices.

And to George Washington, Jefferson wrote:

What has heretofore passed between us on this institution, makes it my duty to mention to you that I have never heard a person in Europe, learned, or unlearned, express his thoughts upon this institution, who did not consider it as dishonourable & destructive to our Governments, and that every writing which has come out since my arrival here, in which it is mentioned, considers it, even as now reformed, as the germ whose development is one day to destroy the fabric we have reared. I did not apprehend this while I had American ideas only, but I confess what I have seen in Europe has brought me over to that opinion; & that tho‚ the day may be at some distance, beyond the reach of our lives perhaps, yet it will certainly come, when a single fibre left of this institution, will produce an hereditary aristocracy which will change the form of our Governments from the best to the worst in the world.

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