On the one hand, this meant that politics was open to a whole class of talented men (women were still unimaginable as leaders outside the family) who would have languished in obscurity in Europe or Great Britain because they lacked the proper bloodlines. There was still a discernible social hierarchy in America, but compared to all other advanced societies at that time, the United States afforded an unprecedented opportunity for movement from bottom to top. As a result, when the revolutionary crisis arrived, it could draw upon the latent talent from a segment of the population never before
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