Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow CINCINNATI - Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and of the Political History of the United States, vol. 1 Abdication-Duty

Return to Title Page for Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and of the Political History of the United States, vol. 1 Abdication-Duty

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Economics
Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: History

CINCINNATI - John Joseph Lalor, Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and of the Political History of the United States, vol. 1 Abdication-Duty [1881]

Edition used:

Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and of the Political History of the United States by the best American and European Authors, ed. John J. Lalor (New York: Maynard, Merrill, & Co., 1899). Vol 1 Abdication-Duty.

Part of: Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and of the Political History of the United States, 3 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


CINCINNATI

CINCINNATI, Order of the (IN U S. HISTORY), a society founded by the officers of the revolutionary army just before their final separation. The name was taken from Cineinnatus, like whom the members had left the plow at the call of their country, and were now returning, to it when their services were no longer needed. Membership in the order was to be mainly confined to the officers, to their eldest male descendants, and, failing these, to collateral male descendants; and this feature stamped the order, in the popular belief, as an imitation of European orders of knighthood and an attempt to create an aristocracy. Ædanus Burke, a South Carolinian, published a pamphlet against the order; the governor of South Carolina denounced it in his address to the legislature; the legislatures of Massachusetts, Rhobe Isdland and Pennsylvania censured it by resolution; and those revolutionary leaders who had not been in the army considered the hereditary principle an unwise one. At the first general meeting, May, 1784, Washington persuaded the order to abolish the principle of hereditary membership, and with this modification it still survives, its membership being recruited by election.

—See 3 Hildreth's United States. 443; Mattox's History of The Cincinnati Society; 6 Pennsylvania Historical Society's Publications.

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON.