Not long ago, while researching historic documents for this book, I
stumbled across this sentence in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787: “[T]he
estates, both of resident and nonresident proprietors in the said territory,
dying intestate, shall descent to, and be distributed among their children,
and the descendants of a deceased child, in equal parts.” What,
I wondered, was this about?
The answer, I soon learned, was primogeniture — or more precisely,
ending primogeniture in America. Jefferson, Madison, and other early
settlers believed the feudal practice of passing all or most property
from father to eldest son had no place in the New World. This wasn’t
about equal rights for women; that notion didn’t arise until later.
Rather, it was about leveling the economic playing and avoiding a permanent
aristocracy.
A nation in which everyone owned some property — in those days,
this meant land — was what Jefferson and his contemporaries had
in mind. In such a society, hard work and merit would be rewarded, while
inherited privilege would be curbed. This vision of America wasn’t
wild romanticism; it seemed quite achievable at the time, given the vast
western frontier. What thwarted it, later, were giveaways of land to
speculators and railroads, the rise of monopolies, and the colossal untaxed
fortunes of the robber barons. ... read
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