Titles of Nobility Amendment - Proposal and Rationale

Proposal and Rationale

The United States Senate approved the measure by a vote of 19–5 on April 27, 1810. It was then adopted by the United States House of Representatives with a vote of 87–3 on May 1, 1810. After the Congress passed it, the amendment was submitted to the state legislatures for ratification.

The proposed amendment was intended to expand upon Article I, Section 9 and Section 10 of the Constitution, which prohibits the states and the federal government from issuing titles of nobility or honor.

There is speculation that the Congress proposed the amendment in response to the 1803 marriage of Napoleon Bonaparte's younger brother, Jerome, and Betsy Patterson of Baltimore, Maryland, who gave birth to a boy for whom she wanted aristocratic recognition from France. The child, named Jérôme Napoleon Bonaparte, was not born in the United States, but in Great Britain on July 7, 1805—nevertheless, he would have held U.S. citizenship through his mother. Another theory is that his mother actually desired a title of nobility for herself and, indeed, she is referred to as the "Duchess of Baltimore" in many texts written about the amendment. The marriage had been annulled in 1805—well before the amendment's proposal by the 11th Congress. Nonetheless, Representative Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina is recorded to have said, when voting on the amendment, that "he considered the vote on this question as deciding whether or not we were to have members of the Legion of Honor in this country."