Activities
The societies usually met once a month, or more often during election season. Applicants for membership had to have five members attest to their "firm and steadfast friend of EQUAL RIGHTS OF MAN" and a couple members could blackball an applicant. "Apostasy from Republican principles" was ground for expulsion. Officers were rotated regularly—in one case every month.
The societies politicked in local elections officially or quietly. They often joined parades and celebrations of July Fourth, and were credited in 1794 with having made that day "more universally celebrated" than it had been. They also celebrated July 14—French Bastille Day. Some societies engaged in direct action to help France in her war with Britain, such as equipping French privateers.
Endless discussions and rounds of resolutions fill the minute books; most common were general addresses and resolutions critical of the Washington administration. In western states, members of the societies agitated against the British for holding the frontier posts and against the Spanish for closing the Mississippi River; in the East, they denounced Britain for "piracy" against American shipping. In the Carolinas they demanded a uniform currency and adequate representation for the growing back country. The societies strongly protested the excise tax on whiskey. They denounced John Jay as special envoy to London and vehemently repudiated the treaty he brought back. They complained about secret sessions of Congress and the state legislatures, demanding that public officials abandon the use of "dark, intricate, antiquated formalities" and "obsolete phraseology" that only lawyers and classical scholars could understand.
Read more about this topic: Democratic-Republican Societies
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