second Jeffersonian objection was that a hereditary society was out of harmony with the spirit of a republic based on what Jefferson called the “natural equality of man.” Washington appears to have taken Jefferson’s counsel seriously.42 The general pressed the Society to end the granting of honorary memberships, a category Jefferson had written “might draw into the order all the men of talents, of office and wealth; and in this case would probably procure an ingraftment into the government.”43
