Homegrown Aristocracy

From Plantation to the House of Burgesses

In my recent essay, I wrote —in the context of the emancipation of the Negroes, that “The reduction of size of the family government undoubtedly produced Statesmen of lower quality seeing as they had less experience in governing,”¹ this essay will be a second part to that essay, and an exposition on that particular quote. Allow me to first note that it is well-established common knowledge that Southern Planters and Negroes had a very close, even familial, relationship; thus, the emancipation of the slaves necessarily reduced the size of the Planters “family unit” which he was responsible for the governing. It is my thesis that the large, or even small plantations, were essentially micro-communities that had a relationship to the State government reflective of that which the State government had to the General government. Dabney says, “The meaning of this silence [of the laws] was, to leave the whole matter to the control of the master.”² It should be no complicated undertaking for the reader to recognize that this is precisely what the Tenth Amendment says in different words: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”³ The “powers” which are “delegated” by the Constitution are called explicit rights; defenders of the Tenth Amendment believe these are the only rights granted to the Federal Government and reject the notion of implied rights. In the spirit of Jefferson, we read between the lines to find the implied rights, and we find only white space. But, lest this essay turn into a defense of the Tenth Amendment, allow me to explain this digression: In the person of the Antebellum Southern Planter (or patriarch more broadly) we see that they have a sovereign standing in the relationship between themselves and the larger government which is reflective of the relationship that the Tenth Amendment secures for the States as they relate to the General Government. It is my multi-faceted thesis that this sovereignty enjoyed by the Southern Planter created a capable and large aristocratic class because they were brought up in such a way that they functioned as the guiding principle over their micro-communities; this Homegrown Aristocracy then becomes the aristocracy of the State government; and until we return to such a method of intentionally home-growing aristocrats, we can expect no aristocratic revival.

Before continuing, it is necessary to define what is meant by “aristocracy.” Most basically, aristocracy is the rule by the best and most capable. It is a fine line which differentiates this from meritocracy; and the line is even thinner yet in the American context. But, Southern history would seem to reveal something more akin to aristocracy then meritocracy. To draw the line more specifically: both are, essentially, the rule of the best, or the ones who have merited the right to rule through their virtue, wisdom, and intellectual capacity, all of which also provide them with a better material existence than lower classes and make the division between the ruling class and the ruled more apparent. But, meritocracy is not concerned with heredity; every individual begins on essentially equal footing and then merit greater or lesser social status according to the aforementioned qualities of a ruler. Aristocracy, on the other hand, is concerned with heredity; which is why we generally see the ruling classes remaining in the hands of the same families over long periods of time in traditionally aristocratic nations and empires.

The American context is a bit of a admixture of both; it could be said to be virtually indistinguishable from Plato’s Noble Myth from the Republic:

“Citizens, we shall say to them in our tale, you are brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of command, and in the composition of these he has mingled gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honour; others he has made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has composed of brass and iron; and the species will generally be preserved in the children. But as all are of the same original stock, a golden parent will sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son. And God proclaims as a first principle to the rulers, and above all else, that there is nothing which they should so anxiously guard, or of which they are to be such good guardians, as of the purity of the race. They should observe what elements mingle in their offspring; for if the son of a golden or silver parent has an admixture of brass and iron, then nature orders a transposition of ranks, and the eye of the ruler must not be pitiful towards the child because he has to descend in the scale and become a husbandman or craftsman, just as there may be sons of craftsmen who having an admixture of gold or silver in them are raised to honour, and become guardians or auxiliaries. For an oracle says that when a man of brass or iron guards the State, it will be destroyed.”⁴

Far from being a dead and purely hereditary aristocracy, Plato presents us with a type of meritorious aristocracy. There is the hereditary aspect which says children will likely be of the same stock as their parents, but there is a recognition that they may not be, and provisions are put in place to handle cases of better children being born to worse parents, and worse children being born to better children. In this way, the aristocracy is prevented from stagnating (such as England’s had already done by the late 18th Century); it is a semi-fluid hierarchy which encourages competition rather than entitlement and which ensures that the worthiest are always at the top of the hierarchy. This is, more to the point, a very helpful way to understand the “American Dream” of the Antebellum States. And further, I would like to present to you, dear reader, an interpretation of Southern history which posits the Antebellum Plantation as the refining fire which separated the wheat from the chaff and established the living and vibrant aristocracy that has become the image of America.

William and Mary Randolph: For those who do not know, William and Mary are called the “Adam and Eve of Virginia,” and nearly all Virginia, and many Southern elite families can trace their lineage directly to them or are related to them in some other way; notable families such as the Randolph, Jefferson, and Lee families are among these. I bring this up only as a microcosm to show that there was a distinctly hereditary aristocracy which can be seen in Southern history which disallows us to refer to it as merely a meritocracy. The Randolphs are by no means the only microcosm we could examine; the Washington family is another aristocratic line from Old Dominion that gave birth to other elite families. But, it was not a set-in-stone reality that descendants of these noble lines would be named among our aristocracy; in this way, it differed from England and had a far more traditional and Platonic nature.

We have defined that aristocracy is the rule of the worthiest based on their virtue, wisdom, and intellectual capacity which is evidence that God has chosen them to rule and order society towards the higher good (or the Forms, in Platonic language). This system places the lower castes at the direction of one (or several) rulers, the Philosopher-Kings of Plato’s Republic. The lower castes are directed towards the good (or virtuous) life and the mutual wellbeing of all citizens through the aristocracy directing their education, labor, and taxes of the lower classes in ways which achieves this latter end and build a stable and lasting society which cultivates human flourishing.

With that in mind, we can turn again to Dabney:

But the Southern system, by placing the labour of many at the direction of one more cultivated mind, and that furnished with more abundant capital, secured the most liberal and enlightened employment of machines, and the most convenient “division of labour.”

Robert Lewis Dabney

It is worth noting, that as with Plato and much of the ancient Greek world, into the days of the Roman Republic, the idea of aristocracy was not dialectically opposed to “voting” (not to be confused with radical democracy, which the aforementioned decry). And in the Antebellum South, voting held the same role as it did in Plato’s Republic and Laws. All of this to say that when I present the Virginian aristocracy, there are those who would denounce it as a “liberal” or “anti-traditional” aristocracy; the traditional manifestation being little more than autocracy, this is a pipe dream and has never existed. Traditional aristocracies have always been paired with democratic republicanism to greater or lesser degrees, the Old South is no exception, and was, arguably, less democratic than Athens was.

I will allow Dabney to expound further:

“It [Virginia] was, indeed, a liberal, aristocratic republic. None could vote save the owners of land in fee-simple; and these were permitted to exercise their elective powers directly, only in one sole instance, the election of the General Assembly. This Assembly then exercised, without farther reference to the freeholders, all the powers of the commonwealth. The Assembly elected the Governor of the State. The Assembly appointed all judges of law, and executive officers of State. The county courts, to whom belonged the whole power of police, of local taxation, and of administration of local justice in cases beneath the grade of a felony, formed a proper aristocracy, serving for life, appointing their own clerks and sheriffs, and filling vacancies in their own numbers by a nomination to the Governor, which was always virtually imperative. Such was the government which the statesmen of Virginia deliberately adopted, after signing the Declaration of Independence; than which none could have been devised by human wit, so well adapted to the character and wants of their people, and under which they exhibited the highest political stability and purity which our commonwealth has ever known.”⁵

Now I can begin to develop my thesis. The citizenry, which already constituted the higher-class of the society, voted only for the General Assembly. This Assembly then appointed the Governor without further reference to the constituency; so who comprised the General Assembly? Well, it was dominated by the Planter class. And this makes good sense; the Planters were the most economically productive, the most established in their homes and private affairs, lived the most public lives, and had the capital to dedicate themselves to public service without falling into destitution: they were obviously the clear choice to be appointed. But I am not merely arguing that they were the clear choice, rather, I am contesting that their lives as Planters prepared them for this role and the fruits of their Plantations separated the wheat from the chaff.

In my previous essay I made the case that individual responsibility is necessary to the growth of virtue, and the more responsibility one has, the more virtue one can exemplify. In this way I established a relationship between self-government and family government. It is for this reason that scripture tells us that “A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)”⁶ It would follow from this basic principle that the larger a man’s household is, the more capable he is of ruling. The ruler must be a master-of-the-self, his soul(s) must be in proper order; but in roundabout fashion, in order to become a master of ones self, certain trials must be undergone: trials which require more of a man then can ever be required from mere self-government. The family serves this unique role of being a middle-ground between self-government and the political leader. It has the nature of being an extension-of- self and as such, it is a type of training wheel that grants us more responsibility while being aided by nature to become established in the habit of fulfilling them. And in like manner as the family is a natural steppingstone from the self, the slave was a further step away from the self, but still had the effect of a natural affection through being economically reliant on the slaves and them on the Planter. In other words, much as it would be in a fathers worst interests to abuse his son, to a lesser degree it was in the master’s worst interests to abuse his slaves. Such a consistency of caring for those who are not yourself cements one in a habit of it, and then when they are given the responsibility to care for those who are entirely unrelated, the habit prevails even if the natural affection ceases.

The constituency who voted men to the Assembly could look at the lives of the Planters. They would see their wives, children, and slaves around town; they would see how healthy they looked, how happy they were; they would have been invited to the Plantations for balls and they could see the economic prosperity and general disposition of the household; all of the aforementioned were evidence that the Planter was a Southern Gentleman and the voters can say, “see how he governs and orders his home? So too will he likely govern us.” And in like manner, where they see a Planter fail to care for his home, they will know he will fail to care for them.

In this way, the Planter system of the Old South created aristocrats. Boys were either born to Planters and were quite literally bred for it, or others made their fortune themselves and were raised to the title of Planter deservedly. But in either case, the Old South had a large class of society who were functioning as aristocrats in their home by being the ordering principle of inferior castes to achieve the same goals which governing the State of Virginia would necessitate them to achieve. This is the Homegrown Aristocrat of the Old South who grew to be such legendary rulers such as John Randolph of Roanoke, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.

But my thesis does not end there.

I said, “until we return to such a method of intentionally home-growing aristocrats, we can expect no aristocratic revival,” and it should be apparent how we can begin to home-grow aristocrats today. Much of the far-right simply wants a new class of physically fit men to learn Greek and Latin and then, somehow, magically, a new aristocracy will just manifest itself. This is folly. No amount of classical education or training in combat will develop a living aristocracy even remotely comparable to that which the Old South featured.

It begins in the home. The aristocracy was once born there, and so it will be again. We cannot reestablish the institution of slavery at the present moment, but we can have children and take the first step across the river which divided the Southern Gentleman Planter from the lower class. Have more children, get some land, give them greater responsibility, make them more capable adults, and the cycle will continue until another John Randolph of Roanoke once again walks among us side-by-side with his gentlemanly peers.⁷

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Thank you for reading, may you be the father of the next aristocracy.

Your humble and obedient servant,

John, Son of Dick

1.

2. Dabney, Robert Lewis, “Defense of Virginia”

3. U.S. Constitution - Tenth Amendment | Resources | Constitution Annotated | Congress.gov | Library of Congress

4. Plato’s Republic, Book 3, 415a – d

5. Dabney

6. 1 Timothy 3:2-5

7. Hopefully, with their slaves in-tow.