Quiz: An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States

All 30 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. Why did Gouverneur Morris want to restrict the vote to freeholders?

   He foresaw dependent wage earners who would sell their votes to the rich He wanted to exclude Loyalists whose lands had been confiscated during the war He believed that merchants and lawyers already held too much power in the state legislatures He thought only landowners paid the direct taxes that would support the government
2. 2. What does Beard’s classification of the Pennsylvania convention show about the opponents of ratification?

   Most were merchants and shipowners from Philadelphia and its suburbs They were equally divided between farmers and holders of personalty capital More than two-thirds of those classifiable were primarily farmers Most were lawyers and clergymen
3. 3. Why, according to Beard, did the Annapolis convention fail to achieve more?

   Its delegates were all Antifederalists Congress forbade it to meet Too few delegates attended It was broken up by Shays’s followers
4. 4. Which of these was not among the four disfranchised groups Beard lists?

   Holders of state securities Men unable to meet property tests Slaves Women
5. 5. What does Beard call the second school of American historical interpretation?

   The Federalist school The Teutonic school The frontier school The Puritan school
6. 6. What is Beard’s conclusion about Hamilton’s personal finances?

   He made a fortune from insider speculation in the public debt He was the largest security holder in the Convention and profited greatly He held only petty securities and sought no personal gain He owned no western land and no public securities whatever
7. 7. What was Marshall’s position in Ogden v. Saunders (1827)?

   He held that state paper money could be legal tender for debts contracted in future He stood aside from the case, pleading his own personal interest as a creditor Dissenting, he held laws on future contracts impaired their obligation too Writing for the majority, he upheld the New York bankruptcy law in question
8. 8. What gain does Beard estimate came to holders of securities through the adoption of the Constitution?

   At least $40 million About $4 million About $100 million in all Nothing measurable
9. 9. What proportion of the Convention’s members does Beard say were personally interested in the outcome of their work?

   About one-third Fewer than one in ten About one-half At least five-sixths
10. 10. How many of Boston’s twelve delegates to the Massachusetts convention does Beard find holding public securities?

    At least eight Two All twelve None, since the ledgers were lost
11. 11. Which historical event does Beard compare to the Constitution to separate the motives of its leaders from its general benefits?

    The Glorious Revolution The Reformation The Norman Conquest The French Revolution
12. 12. How does Beard organize his survey of the political views of the Convention’s members?

    He groups them by state from north to south He divides them into Federalists and Antifederalists He takes the members in alphabetical order He ranks them by the value of their property
13. 13. In which state did all adult men, without property qualifications, vote for delegates to the ratifying convention?

    New York Virginia Pennsylvania Massachusetts
14. 14. What is Beard’s rough estimate of how many men favoured ratification?

    About 13,000, the number who voted in Pennsylvania About half of all adult males About 1,900,000, the population of the doubtful states Not more than 100,000, about one in six adult males
15. 15. Which source does Beard say he is using for the first time in a study of the Constitution?

    Madison’s private diary The British Foreign Office archives The minutes of the state ratifying conventions The records of the Treasury Department
16. 16. What was Franklin’s view of the country’s condition early in 1787, as Beard reports it?

    It was close to collapse and needed a monarchy Only the fishing trade was doing well Farmers were suffering badly from falling land values and heavy taxes It was generally prosperous, and complaints came from a noisy few
17. 17. According to Beard, the system described in The Federalist had a positive part, a government built to break majority rule, and a negative part. What was the negative part?

    Limits on the powers of the President A prohibition on federal taxes on land Restrictions on the state legislatures A ban on standing armies in peacetime
18. 18. According to Madison’s 1788 letter to Jefferson, which provisions created more enemies of the Constitution than all its other faults together?

    Those on the militia and on standing armies in peace Those on the Senate and the powers of the presidency Those on treaties, paper money and contracts Those on the slave trade and on representation
19. 19. Which two clauses does Beard say “embody the chief demands of personalty against agrarianism”?

    The ban on state paper money and the ban on impairing contracts The commerce clause and the taxing clause The guarantee clause and the militia clause The three-fifths clause and the clause on the return of fugitive slaves
20. 20. On what condition did enough New York opponents agree to ratification?

    That New York would keep the revenue from the customs house at its port for itself That New York City would remain the seat of the new national government for good That George Clinton would be made vice-president under the new federal government That a circular would recommend a second national convention to revise it
21. 21. What did New York’s 1788 elections show, according to Beard?

    Fewer men voted for the ratifying convention than for the assembly, as the issue drew little interest Property qualifications for voting were abolished for good in New York in that same year Turnout was the same in both elections, since the same property rules applied to each of them Far more voted for the ratifying convention, under manhood suffrage, than for the assembly
22. 22. What did Nicholas Gilman advise New Hampshire’s towns to do in September 1787?

    Issue paper money Sell all their public securities at once, before prices fell Buy public securities while they were cheap Refuse to pay federal requisitions
23. 23. Why did Luther Martin oppose the clause forbidding the states to impair the obligation of contracts?

    He believed the clause would ruin Maryland’s merchants and its foreign trade He thought states might need to relieve debtors in times of distress He wanted Congress alone to regulate contracts He objected that it would free the slaves
24. 24. According to Beard’s hypothesis, where did most of the opposition to the Constitution come from?

    Non-slaveholding farmers and debtors Southern slaveholding planters Holders of public securities Merchants and shipowners
25. 25. Whose writing does Beard present as a clear early statement of economic determinism in politics?

    John Adams’s, in his Defence of the Constitutions James Madison’s, in The Federalist Karl Marx’s, in Capital Thomas Jefferson’s, in the Declaration of Independence
26. 26. What were the four sources of conflict between disunited states that Beard draws from Hamilton?

    Rival forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, democracy and anarchy Territory, commerce, the national debt and contract violations Religion, language, slavery and the rights to the Newfoundland fisheries Indian wars, foreign alliances, Barbary piracy and immigration from Europe
27. 27. Which organization did Gerry fear could control a popular election of the President?

    The old Sons of Liberty clubs in the towns The Bank of North America in Philadelphia The Order of the Cincinnati The Ohio Company of Associates
28. 28. How did Pennsylvania’s Federalists obtain the quorum needed to call the state convention?

    Congress ordered the absent members to attend They held a special election in the western counties to replace the absent members They lowered the required quorum by a vote of the members who remained present Officers and a mob seized absent members and forced them into the house
29. 29. How many “desperate & unprincipled men” did Knox estimate the insurgents in New England might muster?

    Well over 100,000 50,000 12,000 or 15,000 About 1,000
30. 30. In Knox’s letter to Washington, what did the third Massachusetts party, the “Insurgents or their favorers,” want?

    A government like the British, with a king A national bank An annihilation of debts, public and private A separate state in Maine