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\"One could almost use the word momentous, or the word epoch-making though epoch-ending might be more to the point ... I don't see how anyone henceforth can repeat the old cliches which Beard put into circulation forty years ago.\"—Frederick B. Tolles, Swarthmore College. \"American historians, particularly those who have given lectures or written books based on the Beard thesis, ignore Brown's book at their peril.\"—American Historical Review. Originally published in 1956. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

No detailed description available for \"Charles Beard and the Constitution\".

In Chapter III Beard asked whether the government under the Articles of Confederation adversely affected the personalty interests of the country and whether the leaders of the move for the Constitution represented these interests. Both questions he answered in the affirmative. Capital as opposed to land—public securities, shipping, manufacturing, money at interest—suffered at the hands of the prevailing government, and men representing these interests were involved in the maneuvers. In addition, a new element is injected—the conspiracy theory of the Constitution. These personalty interests attempted to secure protection for their property through regular constitutional channels, but, failing

After examining the Constitution under the revealing light thrown on it byThe Federalistand finding that the Constitution was an economic document reflecting the economic interests of the delegates, Beard posed this as the next problem: Did the members of the Convention have views about the political science of the new system similar to the views expressed inThe Federalist? The reader can doubtless anticipate the answer: “The conclusion seems warranted that the authors ofThe Federalistgeneralized the political doctrines of the members of the Convention with a high degree of precision, in spite of the great diversity

Chapter X furnishes something of a refinement of the half of the Beard thesis that the Constitution was put over by personalty interests. Throughout the chapter Beard tried to show that the vote for the Constitution came from regions where personalty was strong while the vote against it came almost uniformly from agricultural and debtor regions. But then Beard went further than he had gone in previous chapters. Since so many leaders in the movement for ratification were large security holders and securities constituted such a large portion of personalty, he said, the security holders were a very considerable, if