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Economic Interests and the American Constitution: A Quantitative Rehabilitation of Charles A. Beard

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Robert A. McGuire  and
Robert L. Ohsfeldt
Robert A. McGuire
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana 47306
Robert L. Ohsfeldt
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana 47306
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Abstract

An important change in the structure of U.S. institutions occurred when the government under the Articles of Confederation was replaced by a new government under the Constitution. In 1913, Charles A. Beard proposed a view of the formation of the United States Constitution—an economic interpretation—that remains a much discussed yet unresolved explanation of the behavior and motives of the men who wrote the document. This paper provides the first rigorous statistical test of this issue. We summarize the preliminary results of a statistical analysis of the relationship between the voting behavior of individual delegates involved in the making of the Constitution and their economic and personal characteristics. Contrary to current historical wisdom, significant patterns related to economic interests are found in the voting, with the division of interests generally consistent with that outlined by Charles A. Beard seventy years ago.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Third Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 509 - 519
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1984

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References

1 This point is made forcefully in North, Douglass C., Structure and Change in Economic History (New York, 1981), Ch. 3.Google Scholar

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

3 This and the preceding statement represent a synthesis of the treatment of Beard's thesis in most current economic history textbooks. For examples, see Brownlee, W. Elliot, Dynamics of Ascent (New York, 1979), pp. 112–13;Google ScholarNorth, Douglass C., “Government and the American Economy” in Davis, Lance et al. , American Economic Growth (New York, 1972), pp. 26–27;Google ScholarWalton, Gary and Robertson, Ross, History of the American Economy (New York, 1983), pp. 123–25;Google ScholarHughes, Jonathan, American Economic History (Glenview, Illinois, 1983), p. 141.Google Scholar

4 Beard, An Economic Interpretation, pp. 16–18.Google Scholar

5 Although we believe this paragraph accurately reflects Charles Beard's thesis, other scholars may not agree. Beard's An Economic Interpretation is confusing because he uses terms imprecisely, continuously interchanging “economic interest” with “class interest,” “class” with “group,” and “economic interpretation” with “economic determinism.” As a result, Beard's thesis sufficiently broad and ambiguous to offer support for a variety of interpretations. Many scholars consider his fundamental contribution to be a “class analysis” of the motives of the Founding Fathers. We do not accept this as an accurate portrayal of Beard's thesis. But even if others do not accept our interpretation of Beard, we suggest that an important issue to analyze is whether the self—interests of delegates affected their voting behavior. Therefore, this paragraph more appropriately may be said to reflect a “Beardian” view rather than “Beard's” view.Google Scholar

6 See Blinkoff, Maurice, “The Influence of Charles A. Beard upon American Historiography,” University of Buffalo Studies, 12(1936), 1–84.Google Scholar

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16 Disentangling the influence of political factors from economic factors on voting behavior becomes difficult if economic interests are strongly correlated with political philosophy. This potential problem of multicollinearity may create difficulties of interpretation. This issue is discussed in more detail later in the paper.Google Scholar

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20 For more details on this aspect of the study, see McGuire, Robert A. and Ohsfeldt, Robert L., “A New Economic Interpretation of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States,” mimeo. For more details on our analysis of voting patterns over the individual issues at Philadelphia, see Robert A. McGuire and Robert L. Ohsfeldt, “Economic Interest Groups and Voting Patterns in the Constitutional Convention of 1787,” mimeo.Google Scholar

21 For a detailed discussion of logit analysis, see Hanushek, Eric and Jackson, John E., Statistical Methods for Social Scientists (New York, 1977), Ch. 7.Google Scholar

22 It follows that strategic voting behavior was less likely at the state ratifying conventions and, therefore, does not affect our statistical analysis.Google Scholar

23 For additional details on the ratification aspect of the study, see McGuire, Robert A. and Ohsfeldt, Robert L., “A New Economic Interpretation of the Ratification of the Constitution of the United States,” mimeo.Google Scholar

24 Our proxy variables for political factors may not represent political philosophy very well. Some relevant variables may have been omitted. If the omitted variables are not correlated with the included variables, no severe problems are created. If they are strongly correlated, there is a problem of interpretation because isolating the influences of the relevant variables becomes computationally impossible.Google Scholar

25 For details on these proxy variables, see McGuire and Ohsfeldt, “A New Economic Interpretation of Formation” and ”A New Economic Interpretation of Ratification.”Google Scholar

26 A conceptual problem inherent in the study is that the characteristics of the entire citizenry may be more relevant to an understanding of the Constitution than the characteristics of delegates alone. It has been argued the delegates represented the will of their constituents and not their personal interests. If this is true, researchers would need to analyze the characteristics of the citizenry (Bensen, Turner and Beard). There are at least two problems with this analytical approach. As a practical matter, the compilation of detailed profiles for the entire voting citizenry or even representative groups would be prohibitively costly. Also, the belief that the vote of a delegate was determined primarily by the will of his constituents and that his personal interests did not influence his voting behavior significantly is restrictive. In any case, an understanding of the relationship between the delegates' voting behavior and the delegates' characteristics is necessary for a complete understanding of the making of the Constitution.Google Scholar

27 Beard argues that slaveowners might have opposed the Constitution because they feared adverse legislation concerning slavery and the slave trade, as well as the potential for “navigation acts” imposed on them by a national legislature controlled by the more populous northern states. Beard, however, thought this factor would be outweighed by slaveowners' other interests (for example, financial interests) and their desires for a stronger national government to quell possible slave revolts (Beard, An Economic Interpretation, pp. 29–30). Beard may have overestimated the importance of the expectation of slave revolts given that slaveowners, holding other economic interests constant, opposed the Constitution.Google Scholar