The Debunker Debunked
Here's why this book was written: In 1913, Columbia University History Professor, Charles Beard, published "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution." Beard's thesis was straight out of Karl Marx: The US Constitution was designed, written and ratified - Beard told his readers - not to secure the welfare of the American people as a whole, but for no other purpose than to safeguard the wealth and privilege of a propertied elite. Beard's message was somewhat shocking; it was also totally wrong. But in the absence of rebuttal, it became the conventional wisdom for the next 50 years - that is, until 1958, when Forrest McDonald's "We the People" blew Beard's argument out of the water.
In the simplest terms, Beard saw the Constitution as the product of a fierce class-struggle between two interest groups, one agrarian, the other mercantile. The first of these were mainly small farmers, often in debt, in favor of paper money and stay-laws, dominant in the state legislatures - in Beard's scheme, the "good guys". The second were merchants and speculators in war bonds, people who favored creditor's rights and a strong central government - these were the "bad guys". Beard's sketchy research seemed to confirm his hunch that those who supported the Constitution, whether at the Convention or later in the process of ratification, came from the mercantilist group. Thus his conclusion: the US Constitution is "an economic document drawn with superb skill" and foisted on a largely agrarian country by a clever, monied elite.
Exploding this theory turned out to be child's play. McDonald collected a lot of data that Beard never considered. And this data showed that in reality, most supporters of the Constitution were NOT people with mercantile interests, but rather those who owned farms. In other words, the people Beard imagined as victims of the new order - actually threw their support behind it! For example, 77% of the Delaware delegation, which voted unanimously to ratify, were farmers and 2/3 of those were small farmers with low incomes. Even in Connecticut, where mercantile interests were strong, 75% of farmers voted in favor of ratification. So much for Beard!
How did Beard get it so wrong? Among other things, his simplistic analysis obscured differences in the economic interests of various subgroups of mercantilists and agrarians. Thus he ignored many of the economic factors that actually motivated the delegates and missed the fact that many farmers had something to gain from the Constitution, just as some merchants had something to lose.
McDonald doesn't deny that economic motives are important to the analysis of history. On the other hand, "no single system of interpretation (economic or otherwise) can explain all historical phenomena"; an adequate explanation requires that "countless noneconomic factors be taken into consideration."
One cannot do justice to McDonald in a short review. The book is superb and is recommended for anyone interested in constitutional history.
