Drive down Interstate 95, and you’ll find evidence of the French influence on the American Founding: Fayetteville.
Read James R. Gaines’ new book, For Liberty And Glory: Washington, Lafayette, And Their Revolutions (W.W. Norton), and you’ll learn about the intricate ties between the American and French revolutions.
Among the most interesting points of discussion is the contrast between those two upheavals:
Though the Notables and America’s framers were dealing with many of the same issues, as any thoroughgoing reform of government would have to do ? where the power to tax should reside, the relative power of local and central government, the nature and relationship of the executive, legislative, and judiciary functions ? the differences between the two deliberative bodies and their work were much more stark than the similarities. The Constitutional Convention, as radical as its intentions may have been, had a firmer basis and a narrower scope than the Assembly of Notables, which threw open every question about French governance at once, many of them issues that America had already settled (taxation by representation, freedom of religion, and the vices of absolutism, for example). In contrast to the disciplined agenda and decorum of the Constitutional Convention, the Notables’ vast self-designated agenda was negotiated virtually in public and in the rude, raucous style of French legislative debate. The Assembly of Notables became so unruly that someone actually moved that only four people be allowed to speak at once.
You’ll have to read the book to discover other interesting tidbits, such as the source of the name of the operatic character Figaro (along with the tenuous link between that character and the nascent American Revolution).
