We lost it quite a bit before then.
Several years ago I read an essay stating that we really weren’t all that different from the French because we had experienced 4 republics. This was a bit different from Yale historian Bruce Ackerman’s 3 republics based on constitutional interpretation, and different again from Jude Wanniski’s 4 republics. (I’m still trying to find that essay.) I’ll try to sum the essay quickly and forego my usual pedantic writing style.
The First Republic functioned under the Articles of Confederation but failed after only a decade, killed off by trade wars between the states. There was no common currency. Things fell apart.
The Second Republic was founded by Hamilton and Madison and functioned under the Constitution. During the ratification debates, anti-Federalists (adherents of the First Republic) saw the Constitutional Convention as treason and a betrayal of 1776. Read the “Anti-Federalist Papers” to get the gist of the argument.
The Federalist impulses of Washington and Hamilton were derailed by Jackson who went to a full states’ right regimen. Jackson’s impact was so great that to restore Hamiltonian governance required cracking the Union and fighting a war. Things fell apart.
The Third Republic was founded by Lincoln and functioned under a greatly amended version of the Constitution. It was a purely Hamiltonian construct, created when Lincoln refused the states what they felt was the ultimate state’s right: To leave peacefully. Big Business ran the country.
During the Second Republic, the Jeffersonian impulse was exercised via states’ rights and a weak federal government, but the Civil War and the amended Constitution had killed that off. As a result, during the Third Republic the Jeffersonian impulse (via the Progressive Movement) favored Big Government protecting the people from Big Business, i.e. Jeffersonian ends achieved through Hamiltonian means. Theodore Roosevelt made the first strides in this direction. Today we call it “compassionate conservatism.”
A business panic related to easy credit from the Federal Reserve led to a depression blamed on Big Business. Things fell apart.
The Fourth Republic was created by Franklin Roosevelt and functioned under Executive Orders. The Constitution meant what hired judges said it meant, and Earl Warren had as much power as the president. This republic was not so much Democratic Socialism as Government Capitalism with a large bureaucracy running the country and the people insulated from ruling themselves. Presidents and Congresses came and went, but the courts and bureaucracy continued on.
Technically speaking, the Jeffersonian republic ended when Lincoln decided to go Hamiltonian and won the argument in 1865. FDR created a semi-socialist version of the Jeffersonian republic, but it’s getting to expensive to maintain. Eventually things will fall apart – but when?