1. Beard, Charles A., An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1913, 1935).Google Scholar

2. For excellent and comprehensive reviews of the debate on the struggle surrounding the adoption of the Constitution, see Greene, Jack P., ed., The Reinterpretation of the American Revolution, 1763-1789 (New York: Harper & Row, 1968)Google Scholar, Introduction; and Hutson, James H., “Country, Court, and Constitution: Antifederalism and the Historians,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d sen, 38 (1981): 337–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Greene, incidentally, after surveying the critical literature, acknowledges “how giant a shadow Beard had cast.” Reinterpretation, 66.

3. For the impact of Beard's study on later generations of scholars, see Blinkoff, Maurice, The Influence of Charles A. Beard upon American Historiography, University of Buffalo Studies 12, Monographs in History 4 (1936), chap. 2Google Scholar. See also Lerner, Max, Ideas Are Weapons: The History and Uses of Ideas (New York: Viking, 1939), 152–69Google Scholar; Brown, Robert E., Charles Beard and the Constitution: A Critical Analysis of “An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Introduction; and Hofstadter, Richard, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (New York: Knopf, 1968), chap. 6.Google Scholar

4. Adair, Douglass, “The Tenth Federalist Revisited,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d sen, 8 (1951): 48–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kenyon, Cecelia M., “Men of Little Faith: The Anti-Federalists on the Nature of Representative Government,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 12 (1955): 3–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kenyon, Cecelia M., ed., The Antifederalists (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966)Google Scholar; Brown, Charles Beard and the Constitution; McDonald, Forrest, We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958)Google Scholar. See also McDonald's, introduction to the 1986 edition of Beard, An Economic Interpretation (New York: The Free Press)Google Scholar.

5. Jensen, Merrill, The New Nation: A History of the United States, 1781-1789 (New York: Knopf, 1950)Google Scholar; Main, Jackson Turner, The Antifederalists: Critics of the Constitution, 1781-1788 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Wood, Gordon S., The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

6. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 626. See also, in the same vein, Appleby, Joyce, “The American Heritage: The Heirs and the Disinherited,” Journal of American History 74 (1987): 810–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. In Beeman, Richard, Botein, Stephen, and Carter, Edward C. II, eds., Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 69–109Google Scholar. See also The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1992)Google Scholar.

8. In 1987, the William and Mary Quarterly invited twelve prominent historians to engage in a reassessment of Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, nearly twenty years after its appearance. Their comments, together with the author's reply, were published under the heading “Forum,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 44 (1987): 549–640CrossRefGoogle Scholar (hereinafter cited as “Forum”). The contributors uniformly praised the book while highlighting certain features that could have been handled differently or might have been expanded upon. (See, for example, the laudatory comments of Jack Rakove, who noted certain areas of research left undone by Wood [617-22]. In his recent monumental study, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution [New York: Knopf, 1996]Google Scholar, Rakove like-wise extols The Creation of the American Republic without any serious criticism.) Several of the commentators take issue with Wood's discussion, in the last third of his book, of the Critical Period and the Constitutional Convention. (See, in particular, Ralph Ketcham, 576-82; Pauline Maier, 587-88; and Peter S. Onuf, 615-16.) These writers dispute the claim that the Constitution represented a counterrevolutionary step that radically departed from the ideals that underlay the Revolution. My article seeks to take this analysis a step further by questioning Wood's assertion that the Constitutional Convention was designed primarily to overcome the social turmoil besetting the states.

9. An Economic Interpretation, 61-63.

10. Beard, Charles, The Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York: Macmillan, 1915), 464.Google Scholar Taking his analysis beyond the Constitutional Convention, Beard asserts: “The spokesmen of the Federalist and Republican parties, Hamilton and Jefferson, were respectively the spokesmen of capitalistic and agrarian interests.” Ibid., 465-66.

11. Thus, according to one writer, Beard “identified with the Hamiltonian Federalist tradition and had nothing good to say about Jefferson or the Anti-Federalist opponents of the Constitution.” McCorkle, Pope, “The Historian as Intellectual: Charles Beard and the Constitution Reconsidered,” American Journal of Legal History 28 (1984): 318CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. See, in this regard, the comments of Ruth H. Bloch, John Patrick Diggins, and John M. Murrin, “Forum,” 551, 564, 599.

13. The Creation of the American Republic, 463.

14. Ibid., 465.

15. Ibid., 474-75.

16. Ibid., 475.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., 476.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid., 467.

21. Ibid., 484-85.

22. “Interests and Disinterestedness,” 69.

23. Ibid., 70.

24. Ibid., 72-73.

25. Ibid., 76.

26. Ibid., 80-81.

27. Ibid., 81.

28. Ibid., 92.

29. In this regard, it is worth recalling Madison's observations, in Federalist, No. 40, on the unanimity requirement. He spoke there of “the absurdity of subjecting the fate of 12 States to the perverseness or corruption of a thirteenth”; and of “the example of inflexible opposition given by a majority of 1-60th of the people of America to a measure approved and called for by the voice of twelve States, comprising 59-60ths of the people.” This example, he said, was “still fresh in the memory and indignation of every citizen who has felt for the wounded honor and prosperity of his country.” (Emphasis in original.)

30. Rutland, Robert et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975) (hereinafter: Madison, Papers), 9:294–95Google Scholar.

31. See below, 547-50.

32. “Interests and Disinterestedness,” 73. However, the correct citation from the Writings of Washington is, as the next note indicates, from vol. 28, not 18.

33. Fitzpatrick, John C., ed., The Writings of George Washington (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1938), 28:431–32Google Scholar.

34. Ibid., 431 (emphasis in original).

35. Ibid., 502-3. An extract from a letter written by Washington in 1785 illustrates the chaotic state of the varied values of the dollar. The following instructions were given by Washington to a messenger whom he sent to Boston harbor to collect a gift of two jackasses that had arrived from the Spanish government: “Keep an exact account of your expenses from the time you leave home until you return to it again; remembering that dollars in the States of Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania & part of New Jersey, pass at 7/6; bordering on New York, & in that State for 8/—and in all the New England Governments at 6/ as in Virginia—all other silver, & gold, in that proportion.” Ibid., 299.

36. This is actually the second of Wood's two references to Madison, but chronologically it comes first, and therefore it is dealt with first here.

37. “Interests and Disinterestedness,” 73.

38. Madison, Papers, 9:348-58; and see editor's comment, 345-48.

39. Ibid., 353.

40. Apparently, Wood, and others before him, were misled by the size of the commentary on the last four vices, dealing with purely state derelictions, which equaled in length the commentary on the preceding eight vices. (See the editorial comment in Madison, Papers, 9:346, citing Edward S. Corwin.) However, in this case, the length of the commentary is not an accurate gauge for judging the importance of the proposed reform. The first eight vices were deemed so patently fatal to the system as not to require much elaboration. Above all, Madison's own comment clearly assigns predominant weight to the “federal” vices.

It might also be noted that Madison attached fistnotes to several of the federal vices listed, indicating their relative importance in his eyes. He attached no fistnotes to the last four vices dealing purely with state derelictions. See notes, Ibid., 358.

41. Madison goes on to ask: “From what cause could so fatal an omission have happened in the articles of Confederation? from a mistaken confidence that the justice, the good faith, the honor, the sound policy, of the several legislative assemblies would render superfluous any appeal to the ordinary motives by which the laws secure the obedience of individuals: a confidence which does honor to the enthusiastic virtue of the compilers, as much as the in-experience of the crisis apologizes for their errors.” Ibid, 351.

42. Ibid.

43. “Interests and Disinterestedness,” 73.

44. Madison, Papers, 9:317-22. In his first point, Madison argued for ensuring the supremacy of the federal government over the states. To this end, it was necessary that “the new system” receive “ratification by the people… as will render it clearly paramount to their Legislative authorities.” Ibid., 318. A further point related to the need for instituting the separation of powers on the federal level. “The limited powers now vested in Congs. are frequently mismanaged from the want of such a distribution of them.” Ibid., 319.

45. Ibid., 318 (emphasis in original). Once again the priority that Madison gives to strengthening and securing the federal prerogative is manifest. The national negative is necessary to prevent encroachment by the states on federal authority and also to prevent the states from interfering with one another. A third, and clearly subsidiary consideration, is the prevention of injustices within the states. The same hierarchy of priorities is evident in Madison's letter to George Washington, 16 April 1787: “A negative in all cases whatsoever on the legislative acts of the States, as heretofore exercised by the Kingly prerogative, appears to me to be absolutely necessary, and to be the least possible encroachment on the State jurisdictions. Without this defensive power, every positive power that can be given on paper will be evaded & defeated. The States will continue to invade the national jurisdiction, to violate treaties and the law of nations & to harass each other with rival and spiteful measures dictated by mistaken views of interest. Another happy effect of this prerogative would be its controul on the internal vicissitudes of State policy; and the aggressions of interested majorities on the rights of minorities and of individuals.” Ibid, 383-84 (emphasis in original).

46. Madison to Randolph, 8 April 1787, Ibid., 368-71; Madison to Washington, 16 April 1787, Ibid., 382-87.

47. Ibid., 369. On the matter of national supremacy Madison was quite categorical: “I hold it for a fundamental point that an individual independence of the States, is utterly irreconcileable with the idea of an aggregate sovereignty. I think at the same time that a consolidation of the States into one simple republic is not less unattainable than it would be inexpedient. Let it be tried then whether any middle ground can be taken which will at once support a due supremacy of the national authority, and leave in force the local authorities so far as they can be subordinately useful.” Ibid.; repeated nearly verbatim, Ibid., 383.

Additionally, Madison now advocated confirming national supremacy over the state judiciaries as well, lest state judges nullify the attempts of the national legislature to control state legislation. Madison to Washington, 16 April 1787, Ibid., 384.

48. See letter of George Mason to his son, 20 May 1787. Farrand, Max, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, rev. ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937), 3:23Google Scholar.

49. Ibid., 1:18, n. 7.

50. Notes of James McHenry of Maryland, Ibid., 26.

51. Ibid., 21.

52. In the Convention debates Madison described the operation of the veto in the following terms: “The negative (on the State laws) proposed, will make it [the national legislature] an essential branch of the State Legislatures.” Ibid., 447. One writer has aptly said: “Madison proposed nothing less than an organic union of the general and state governments.” Hobson, Charles F., “The Negative on State Laws: James Madison, the Constitution, and the Crisis of Republican Government,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 36 (1979): 219CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53. See Farrand, Records, 1:318, 447; 2:440, 589.

54. The only change introduced was to make the veto also apply to any state act “contravening… any treaties subsisting under the authority of the Union.” Ibid., 1:47, 54. This clause, added to the Constitution at the suggestion of Benjamin Franklin, was one of the few emendations that he initiated.

55. Ibid., 164.

56. Ibid., 164-65.

57. Ibid., 165.

58. Ibid., 167-68.

59. Ibid., 168. Subsequently, on August 23, Pinckney presented a revised version, under which the legislative veto would be exercised by a two-thirds vote of both houses and would apply to such state laws as “interfered… with the general interests and harmony of the Union.” His proposal to commit to committee failed by a 5:6 vote. Ibid., 2:390-91. Rutledge, who had served as chairman of the Committee of Detail, was apparently outraged by the proposal. “If nothing else, this alone would damn and ought to damn the Constitution. Will any State ever agree to be bound hand & foot in this manner.” Ibid., 391.

60. Ibid., 1:225, 229.

61. See Ibid., 2:27-28, for Madison's notes on the debate.

62. For the purpose of examining state legislation, he suggested the possibility of some local review authority, empowered to give temporary effect to urgent laws. Ibid., 28.

63. Ibid. Immediately after the vote, Luther Martin moved the adoption of the supremacy clause, derived from the New Jersey Plan, which bound the state judiciaries to award paramountcy to federal law over contrary state law in their decisions. His proposal was unanimously adopted. Ibid., 28-29.

64. In lieu of a national veto, the Convention opted for judicial review as a means of umpiring the federal system and of nullifying state legislation inconsistent with the federal constitution. Judicial review of state legislation should be distinguished from judicial review of federal actions. There was widespread acceptance of the former at the Convention; much less of the latter.

65. Ibid., 131-32.

66. See Draft IV, Ibid., 142-44. For a conspiratorial interpretation of the work of the Committee of Detail in this matter, see the note by Hueston, John C., “Altering the Course of the Constitutional Convention: The Role of the Committee of Detail in Establishing the Balance of State and Federal Powers,” Yale Law Journal 100 (1990): 765–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rakove maintains that replacement of the original openended formula of the Virginia Plan with a finite list of powers was probably intended from the beginning. Original Meanings, 84 and 178. This conclusion, however, seems not to coincide with Madison's summation on the subject of powers as cited in the following footnote.

67. See Farrand, Records, 2:181-82. The Convention's handling of the subject of national powers is neatly summarized by Madison in his letter to Jefferson, 24 October 1787: “The second object, the due partition of power, between the General & local Governments, was perhaps of all, the most nice and difficult. A few contended for an entire abolition of the States; some for indefinite power of Legislation in the Congress, with a negative on the laws of the States: some for such a power without a negative: some for a limited power of legislation, with such a negative: the majority finally for a limited power without the negative.” Madison, Papers, 10:209.

68. The foregoing discussion affords a fresh perspective on the relative contribution of the Virginia and New Jersey Plans to the final document of the Constitution.

69. Madison, Papers, 10:163-64.

70. Ibid., 209-14. Jefferson had earlier objected to Madison's proposal for a legislative veto as reaching too far. “It fails in an essential character, that the hole & the patch should be commensurate. But this proposes to mend a small hole by covering the whole garment.” Ibid., 64 (20 June 1787). Thus, Madison's essay was also a reply to Jefferson's argument.

71. In his criticism of the proposed legislative veto, Jefferson had suggested that a federal judicial veto would be much better suited to control unconstitutional state legislation. “Would not an appeal from the state judicatures to a federal court, in all cases where the act of Confederation controuled the question, be as effectual a remedy, & exactly commensurate to the defect.” Ibid. Thus, Madison's reply is directed also to showing why a national legislative veto is more effective than federal judicial review of state legislation. See also Hobson, “The Negative on State Laws,” 229-30.

72. See above, at n. 59.

73. Farrand, Records, 2:439.

74. The expression of Henry Knox, cited by Wood, “Interests and Disinterestedness,” 76.

75. Hobson, “The Negative on State Laws,” 223.

76. Rossiter, Clinton writes: “The most important contribution of the committee of detail was to convert the general resolution on the law-making authority of the proposed government to a list of eighteen specific powers of Congress.” 1787: The Grand Convention (New York: Macmillan, 1966), 208Google Scholar.

77. Madison, Papers, 10:212.

78. For a similar complaint against Beard's Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, see Slonim, Shlomo, “Beard's Historiography and the Constitutional Convention,” Perspectives in American History, n.s., 3 (1987): 190–92Google Scholar. Beard “omitted to utilize the one unimpeachable source that could establish the clear motives of the Framers: the records of the Constitutional Convention.” Ibid., 201.

79. See, e.g., the following statements: Edmund Randolph: “Our chief danger arises from the democratic parts of our constitutions.… None of the constitutions have provided sufficient checks against the democracy.” Farrand, Records, 1:26-27. Elbridge Gerry: “The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want [lack] virtue; but are the dupes of pretended patriots.” Ibid., 48. On the other hand, George Mason warned against denying the democratic voice its place in the institutions of government. “He admitted that we had been too democratic but was afraid we sd. incautiously run into the opposite extreme. We ought to attend to the rights of every class of the people.” Ibid., 48-49. See also Mason's remarks, Ibid., 133-34, 359, 364.

80. Reference to the Convention records, it may be noted, would also have confirmed that at least on two occasions in the debate, Madison argued that the turbulent situation in the states led, or at least contributed significantly, to the holding of the Convention. Ibid., 134 and 318. Therefore, Wood need not have relied exclusively on the letter to Jefferson to establish that Madison deemed the situation in the states perilous to the future of republicanism in the United States. But, of course, this tells us nothing about Madison's relative rating of the two purposes—revitalizing the federal government, on the one hand, and reforming matters within the states, on the other.

81. See the comment of Randolph regarding the need for “a good Senate” to overcome “the turbulence and follies of democracy.” Ibid., 51. See also the remarks of Madison on the formation of the upper house of the legislature. Ibid., 421-23, 430-31.

82. See the listings under the heading “Property” in the index of the Farrand volumes.

83. Rakove, Original Meanings, 332 and 314.

84. “The urgent sense that property rights had to be protected from democratic legislatures became the focus for formulating the principle that individual rights set limits to the legitimate power of government. That property-centered formulation shaped the Constitution in 1787.” Nedelsky, Jennifer, Private Property and the Limits of American Constitutionalism: The Madisonian Framework and its Legacy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 2Google Scholar. “For Madison the utility of the new American state was heavily bound up in the prospect that it could offer a new model of governance to check unrestrained popular majorities.” Tomlins, Christopher L., Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85. See Nedelsky, Private Property, 3-9, and Tomlins, Law, Labor, and Ideology, 60-66. Joyce Appleby also concludes: “The Constitution closed the door on simple majoritarian government in the United States. Popular majorities animated by what people wanted to do at a particular moment would be forever constrained.” “The American Heritage,” 804. In so far as Madison saw property as a particularly vulnerable right, see also Rakove, Original Meanings, 314-16.

86. “Upon examination,… it becomes clear that every feature of the federal Constitution that Beard lists as an antimajoritarian device already existed in the state constitutions in one form or another.… It is one thing to recognize the Founders’ desire to ensure the rights of property under the Constitution, in common with other rights, and it is another thing to attribute the very structure of government to a desire to serve a particular form of property by hamstringing popular rule.” Slonim, “Beard's Historiography,” 201 and 203.

87. Wood, “Interests and Disinterestedness,” 70.

88. Onuf also criticizes Wood's discounting “the significance of ‘pressure from above’ in the reform movement.” “Forum,” 615.

89. Wood, “Interests and Disinterestedness,” 69-70.

90. See n. 4, above, for Kenyon citations.

91. For a different, and more positive, assessment of the role of the Antifederalists in the constitutional debate, see Onuf, Peter S., “Reflections on the Founding: Constitutional Historiography in Bicentennial Perspective,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 46 (1989): 368–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Bailyn, Bernard, “Postscript: Fulfillment: A Commentary on the Constitution,” in The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, enlarged ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1992), 331–51Google Scholar.

92. Resolution adopted by the United States in Congress Assembled, Feb. 21, 1787. Library of Congress, Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1936), 74Google Scholar. Compare Bailyn's observation in the preface to the enlarged edition of his Ideological Origins, viii: “That document [the Constitution]… does not mark a Thermidorean reaction to the idealism of the early period engineered by either a capitalist junta or the proponents of rule by a leisured patriciate;… The earlier principles remained, though in new, more complicated forms, embodied in new institutions devised to perpetuate the received tradition into the modern world.”