Over the course of more than 400 meticulously researched pages, McDonald goes back to original historical records and reveals who was promoting and who was opposing the new Constitution, and why. So far as I can tell, he is the first and only historian to do this type of original-source research, and his conclusions are startling. McDonald notes that a quarter of all the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had voted in their own state legislatures for laws that would have helped debtors and the poor and thus harmed the interests of the rich.
“These [debt relief laws] were the very kinds of laws which, according to Beard’s hypothesis, the delegates had convened to prevent,” says McDonald. He adds: “Another fourth of the delegates had important economic interests that were adversely affected, directly and immediately, by the Constitution they helped write.” While Beard theorizes that the Framers were largely drawn from the class of wealthy bankers and businessmen, McDonald shows that wasn’t true at all:
“The most common and by far the most important property holdings of the delegates were not, as Beard has asserted, mercantile, manufacturing, and public security investments, but agricultural property.” Most were farmers or plantation owners and, as noted earlier, owning a lot of land did not always make one rich in those days, particularly compared to the bankers and mercantilists of New York and Boston.
- Where were those plantation owners?
What was the compromise required to ensure they would ratify the constitution?
Why did Ben Franklin - who abhored slavery - swallowed hard to ensure American became a Constitutional Democracy?
Why was there a push of the founding fathers to treat the original Senators as the House of Lords?
How did the author of the book address 'egalitarian' as it related to those in bondage being viewed as Property and yet at the same time - the property which was not viewed as truly Human - was allowed to be counted for House Representation?
It's 2024 - and jmho - no discussions about the Founding Father's intentions based up on their TANGIBLE actions / recorded history / creation of the Constitution - can be discussed without addressing the inflicted horror of slavery on black bodies.
Descendant of a Great, Great, Great, Great, Grandfather 'sold down the river' from VA to Alabama in 1832.
= new reply since forum marked as read