The Fight For Ratification  

The rule of unanimity under the Articles of Confederation if applied to the Constitution would have made ratification impossible since no one expected support for the Constitution to be unanimous in each of the thirteen states. Support for the Constitution was not unanimous.

     Article 7 of the Constitution stated that the Constitution would become effective upon ratification by nine states (almost the 3/4 majority which was needed for amendment).

     Special conventions would ratify the Constitution rather than state legislatures because the state legislatures would be opposed to giving up power to the newly proposed federal government. Delegates to the ratifying conventions were elected by voters so that a democratic process was in place for the purposes of ratification. The use of special ratifying conventions enable supporters of the Constitution to claim it was approved by "the people" of the nation in its entirety rather than simply by the states. This was an important distinction for those who favored a strong national government with direct powers over the nation as a whole and its citizens.

     The Confederation’s Congress almost censured the Convention for exceeding its authority. The Congress under the Articles of Confederation had only granted the Constitutional Convention the authority to revise and improve the Articles. Consequently detractors of the Constitution claimed that it was an extra-legal document written without the authority of Congress.

     Congress submitted the Constitution to the states on September 28, 1787.

     A great political debate between the Federalists and the Antifederalists ensued.

     Federalists favored strong central government provided for in the new Constitution. They envisioned America as a vast commercial and economic power which would play a significant role in world affairs once it grew in strength. They wanted the federal government to have the legal authority to encourage the development of this new economic power.

     Antifederalists favored a more decentralized federal system. They were opposed to the Constitution. Their vision of America's future was founded on the belief that an agrarian democracy in which the states retained a great deal of sovereignty and legal authority would be more democratic in the classical meaning of the word, and less subject to the potentially anti-democratic influence of powerful economic interests.

     Debate took place in conventions, assemblies, newspapers, journals, pamphlets, editorials, and at public meetings throughout the nation. This debate involved political philosophy, Roman and Greek history (compare to today’s focus on sex and scandal).

     Both sides contributed to the building of the American polity, even though the Antifederalists ended up losing the debate.

     Antifederalists were extremely heterogeneous. This ended up hurting them. Federalists claimed the Antifederalists could not agree among themselves, shared no basic principles, and disagreed so much that their arguments canceled each other out.

     More on Federalists and Antifederalists later.

The Beard Thesis

For the first 100 years of American history historians idolized the Founding Fathers and the Federalists. “The most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man” – a British statesman referring to the Constitution.

Charles A. Beard in 1913 challenged the traditional view with An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution.

Beard’s thesis:

     The delegates to the Constitutional convention were an economic elite intent upon preserving their property and maintaining power at the expense of the democratic masses who desired economic and political equality and were willing to take the property of the wealthy away from them, through democratic means (taxation and debt relief measures passed by state legislatures) or through violence.

     The delegates were speculators in western lands who desired to maintain the value of their investments.

     The delegates were holders of depreciated government securities who believed a strong national government with significant economic authority would be able to restore the value of government securities.

     The delegates were creditors with paper wealth of mortgages, stocks, and bonds. A federal government with significant economic, police, and military powers would be able to ensure that debtors would repay their creditors or face significant penalties. A stable, healthy, and strong economy made possible by a strong national authority would preserve the value of paper wealth.

     The wealthy delegates would benefit from stronger government, prohibitions on state currency and impairment of contracts, and prohibitions on provisions aimed at devaluing paper money and other state laws which had the potential to provide debt relief to debtors and place the wealth of creditors and investors in paper wealth in jeopardy. A single national currency would prevent states from contributing to inflation by the excessive printing of competing paper currencies.

     In summary, the Constitution was written to further the interests of the Founders at the expense of the people and the states

Ever since Beard historians have debated the motivations of the Federalists. Beard’s thesis provided a useful antidote to the unquestioning hero worship of the historians of the 19th Century. However, Beard exaggerated the significance of delegates’ personal wealth.

Problems with Beard’s thesis:

     New evidence unavailable to Beard suggests that delegates' wealth came from more secure sources than paper wealth such as land.

     Most delegates had little stake in paper wealth (they were more involved in landholding and commerce).

     Many prominent nationalists had no western lands, bonds, or much other personal property (James Madison “Father of the Constitution”).

     Some opponents of the Constitution held large blocks of land in the west, securities, and significant amounts of paper wealth.

     Economics was important, but economics was only one element in a complex interplay of state, sectional, group, and individual interests. Beard's thesis, like many theories which identify economics as the sole cause in history, was overly deterministic.

     Support for the Constitution often depended upon how well people had fared under the Articles of Confederation.