- Title
- North Carolina historical review [1950 : April]
-
-
- Date
- April 1950
-
-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
-
North Carolina historical review [1950 : April]
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The North Carolina
Historical Review
Volume XXVII APRIL, 1950 Number 2
AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF THE RATIFICA¬
TION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION IN NORTH
CAROLINA
PART I
THE HILLSBORO CONVENTION— BACKGROUND AND
ECONOMIC INTERESTS OF THE FEDERALISTS
By William C. Pool
Background
One of the most common assumptions about the contest over
ratification of the Federal Constitution is that it was primarily
a conflict of economic classes in which a relatively small group
of wealthy property owners were lined up against men of little
or no property. If such an economic interpretation be followed,
then the launching and ratification of the Constitution was
merely another incident in the age old conflict between rich man
and poor man, creditor and debtor, have and have-not, merchant-
capitalist and agrarian, and aristocrat and democrat. The eco¬
nomic interpretation suggests that all those favoring the new
government were motivated primarily, if not solely, by the hope
of immediate personal gain; that the debtor and small farmer
class were deliberately excluded from representation at the
Philadelphia Convention of 1787 and, as far as possible, from the
state conventions that debated ratification ; and that substantially
all of the opposition came from the debtors and small property
owners.1
The original source of this doctrine is Dr. Charles A. Beard’s
An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United
States, published in 1913. According to Beard the movement for
the Constitution of the United States was originated and carried
1 Eugene C. Barker, “Economic Interpretation of the Constitution,” Texas Law Review,
June, 1944.
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