Burt Folsom, professor of history at Hillsdale College, reviews the debate over Charles Beard’s 1913 book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States in this Freeman article. You may recall that Columbia historian Charles Beard, a leading progressive, set out to destroy the Constitution by attacking the Founders. How could we live by a Constitution that was written by Founders who were creating a document that was designed to protect their economic wealth?
The Founders? economic motives, according to Beard, were straightforward?they were owed money from their support of the Revolution, and those ?public securities? (receipts for loans made to support American independence) were not being repaid under the weak Articles of Confederation. A stronger governing document was needed to ease the transfer of tax dollars from ordinary citizens into the pockets of the more affluent Founders.
Thus, according to Beard, the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787 was promoted by ?a small and active group of men immediately interested through their personal possessions in the outcome of their labors . . .. The propertyless masses were . . . excluded at the outset from participation. . . .?
Burt not only shows how Forest McDonald destroyed the Beard thesis with careful research in the 1950s, but McDonald demonstrates that order to make his case, Beard fabricated some of his research.
For example:
Some of Beard?s mistakes are more subtle. He classifies delegate William Few as a security holder because Few funded a ?certificate of 1779? with a ?nominal? value of $2,170. True, but what Beard neglects to say is that Few?s ?nominal? value was scaled down to a mere $114.80, a sum hardly worth motivating Few to sign the Constitution to redeem.
Beard also fails to mention some of the sacrifices made by some Founders:
What Beard omits from his history is the wisdom and dedication of the Founders in overcoming narrow self-interest to produce a masterful guiding document for the country. The actions of Robert Morris of Pennsylvania and Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts, for example, are remarkable. Both men signed the Constitution and supported it vigorously even though they ultimately lost money doing so.
Both men had committed to buy land with public securities?which were trading at only about 15 percent of par value before the Constitution was ratified. When the Constitution was ratified and the public securities were redeemed, both Morris and Gorham had to buy the securities at par value, so they both lost fortunes. Morris, in fact, went from being the wealthiest merchant in the United States in 1787 to being tossed into debtors? prison in the 1790s. Contrary to Beard, Morris had voted against his own economic self-interest, and for his country?s financial integrity.
Burt also takes on FDR in his new book: New Deal or Raw Deal here.
