Titles of Nobility Amendment
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. She gave birth to a son 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. In turn, his son, Charles Joseph Bonaparte, was born in 1851 and died 1921. He graduated from Harvard Law School, and became Secretary of the Navy and then, in the Theodore Roosevelt Administration, Attorney-General – and created the FBI. Another theory is that his mother actually desired a title of nobility for herself. She is referred to as the "Duchess of Baltimore" in many texts written about the amendment. The marriage had been annulled in 1805. This was well before the amendment's proposal by the 11th Congress. Nonetheless, Representative Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina is recorded to have said 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."