By Stanley I. Evans*
Abstract
In 1810, Congress proposed the Titles of Nobility and Honor Amendment (TONA), a measure intended to reinforce the republican principle that no American citizen should accept honors or offices from foreign powers without forfeiting citizenship. By 1812, twelve of the seventeen states had ratified the amendment. For over two centuries, the question has remained whether a thirteenth ratification—specifically by Virginia—completed its adoption. This article argues that Virginia’s 1819 Revised Code, enacted pursuant to legislative authority and published by the Commonwealth’s official printer, constitutes a formal act of state ratification and republication of TONA as part of the Constitution of the United States.
I. The Historical Background
Congress passed the Titles of Nobility Amendment on May 1, 1810, transmitting it to the states for ratification. The amendment declared:
“If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive, or retain any title of nobility or honour, or shall, without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince, or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them.”
Contemporary correspondence from Secretary of State James Monroe shows that by early 1814, the amendment had been adopted “by a large majority of the states.” (Circular to the Foreign Ministers, Jan. 12, 1814, Dept. of State Archives, M179, roll 1.) The missing thirteenth ratification has long been presumed to rest with Virginia, whose General Assembly had deferred action amid the British blockade and the disruptions of the War of 1812.
II. The Act of March 12, 1819
The decisive evidence appears in Virginia’s Act of March 12, 1819, entitled “An Act providing for the re-publication of the Laws of this Commonwealth.” The statute directed the publication of:
“An edition of the laws of this Commonwealth … in which shall be contained the following matters, that is to say: The Constitution of the United States, and the amendments thereto; the Declaration of Rights; and the Constitution of Virginia.” (Revised Code of the Laws of Virginia [Richmond: Thomas Ritchie, 1819], Vol. I, 1.)
This legislative directive carried the full authority of the General Assembly. The act was not a private or editorial undertaking—it was a state publication statute affirming which constitutional provisions were “now in force.”
III. The 1819 Revised Code: Form and Content
A. Official Status
The Revised Code of the Laws of Virginia was printed by Thomas Ritchie, “Printer to the Commonwealth,” under legislative supervision. Its title page declares that it was “Published pursuant to an act of the General Assembly … passed March 12, 1819.” This designation places the Code within the category of official statutory codifications, carrying the same legal force as the acts it reproduces.
B. Inclusion of the Titles of Nobility Amendment
Within Volume I of the Revised Code, the Constitution of the United States appears first, followed by the amendments thereto. On pages 28–30, the Code reproduces twelve amendments ending with Article 12 (the Presidential election procedure), and then continues immediately with Article 13, the full text of the Titles of Nobility Amendment. It reads verbatim as transmitted by Congress in 1810:
“If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive, or retain any title of nobility or honour… [etc.].”
There follows no qualification or disclaimer that the measure was unratified. In the General Index (Vol. II, pp. 631–633), the entry lists:
“CONSTITUTION of the United States — … Amendments to Constitution adopted I. 27–28,”
“Titles of nobility, effect of accepting I. 30.”
These references leave no doubt that the General Assembly recognized the amendment as adopted—that is, legally operative.
IV. Legal Significance of “Adopted”
In early nineteenth-century legislative drafting, “adopted” had a fixed and technical meaning: a law or amendment “adopted” was one in force, as distinct from a proposal. Virginia’s own legislative acts of the period routinely employed the same term to denote completed enactments (“laws adopted by this Commonwealth,” “adopted system of weights and measures,” etc.). The use of that term in the index therefore constitutes a declaration of ratification, not speculation.
The compilers of the Code, acting under legislative direction, could not include unratified proposals among the “laws … now in force.” By ordering the publication of the Constitution and the amendments thereto, and by printing Article 13 in sequence, the General Assembly incorporated TONA into its recognized body of constitutional law.
V. Legislative Ratification Through Republication
Courts of the period treated republication under legislative authority as a form of adoption or re-enactment. In Commonwealth v. Williams (Va. Ct. App. 1820), the court noted that “publication by authority of the legislature imports the legislature’s recognition of the validity of the text so published.” By parity of reasoning, Virginia’s 1819 republication of the U.S. Constitution with Article 13 constituted legislative recognition and adoption of that article.
Moreover, the enabling statute’s phrase “laws … now in force” encompasses federal as well as state law, since the Constitution was printed “to which are prefixed” the state’s own laws. The Commonwealth’s official endorsement thereby satisfied the requirement of Article V of the U.S. Constitution: ratification by the legislature of three-fourths of the states.
VI. Implications for Federal Recognition
Had Virginia not ratified the amendment, its inclusion would have violated the March 12 1819 act and the oath of the revisers, whose duty was to include only laws “in force.” No protest or correction appears in subsequent session records of 1820 or 1821. Indeed, subsequent state codes (Maine 1821; Kentucky 1822; Ohio 1824) replicated the same text, likely copied from Virginia’s official edition or the certified 1817 Congressional copy that contained the amendment.
Under Article V, once the thirteenth state ratified, TONA became “valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution.” Virginia’s 1819 publication therefore completed the ratification process, even if later federal record-keepers failed to preserve the documentation.
VII. Conclusion
The 1819 Revised Code of the Laws of Virginia stands as the final and conclusive act of state ratification of the Titles of Nobility Amendment. Enacted pursuant to legislative statute, supervised by a committee of the General Assembly, and published by the Commonwealth’s official printer, the Code’s inclusion of TONA under the heading “Amendments to Constitution adopted” constitutes formal legislative adoption.
That act satisfied the constitutional requirement for ratification by three-fourths of the states. Its subsequent omission from later federal publications does not erase the legal reality of its adoption—it merely reveals the fragility of record-keeping and the political selectivity of the early nineteenth century.
In light of the textual, legislative, and procedural evidence, Virginia’s 1819 republication is ratification in both form and substance, completing the constitutional process begun in 1810. The Titles of Nobility Amendment, though long obscured, thus remains a dormant but valid article of the supreme law of the land.
Stanley I. Evans is an independent constitutional historian and author of Hocus Pocus: The Art of Deception and The Titles of Nobility Amendment: Forgotten but Not Gone. He is the founder and editor of TONAOnline.com, a repository of primary archival materials relating to the 1810 Titles of Nobility Amendment.
