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GRACE FLOWERS, 31, made her society debut in Norfolk in 1964; soon after, she marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Georgia. Now she is an aide at Democratic Party headquarters in Atlanta. When she witnessed "up close" the black-white struggle in the Deep South, she could no more remain passive, she says, than could her ancestor, Declaration Signer Edward Rutledge of South Carolina. After the civil rights battles of the '60s, Flowers was dismayed by the wave of assassinations and "the concentration of so much power in so few hands and so much secrecy during the Nixon Administration." Now she is unabashedly optimistic about the nation's future.
She believes that if Edward Rutledge were alive today, "he would consider our national prospects to be very good. We've got a strong defense budget and a conservative fiscal policy. We're having an economic upsurge, and I think he would be glad to see that a Southerner has a very good chance of becoming President."
THOMAS PAINE, 28, a landscape architect, and his brother CHARLES PAINE, 24, an engineer, are descendants of Robert Treat Paine of Massachusetts. Thomas believes if their ancestor were alive today, he would "be a consumer advocate, something like Ralph Nader. He would work outside the political parties to clean up politics because he would sense a feeling of hopelessness within our political life." Not so, says Charles: "I think Robert Treat Paine would see our democracy as still pretty vital." Thomas agrees, noting that "democracy is working, but there is a tremendous lack of people in public life whom one can believe and be inspired by." But, Charles argues, "democracy, with all its countervailing forces, is the best way to prevent abuse. There is no better system around."
Says Thomas: "It's so easy to criticize and so hard to change things radically. That was what was so wrong with the '60s. That is the difference between those revolutionaries who meant so well but didn't get us too far and the revolutionaries of our 200-year history who really knew where to take us."
ROBERT LIVINGSTON KREIDLER, 39, a Cincinnati lawyer, traces his ancestry to Philip Livingston and jokes that "the Livingstons haven't done anything since." He and his wife Franny and two sons live in an old gracious residential area. He is active in sports organizations and the General Society of Colonial Wars.
Kreidler believes his ancestors, if alive today, would "probably be conservative Republicans without being mossbacks. In the beginning, they didn't favor independence, but they did favor firm resistance to encroachments—to being taxed without consent." He also conjectures that his ancestors would not want to hold political office today because it is a full-time occupation. "The problem with Congress is that it's run by professional politicians who are out of touch with the country. They are not like the citizen legislators the country had in the beginning."