The Nationalists of 1781-1783 and the Economic Interpretation of the Constitution

The U.S. Constitution and Monetary Powers: An Analysis of the 1787 Constitutional Convention and Constitutional Transformation of the Nation's Monetary System Emerged

“…Langdon, Baldwin, King, Hamilton, Gerry, McHenry, the entire Pennsylvania delegation, and maybe a few others, who wanted an absolute Constitutional ban on the emission of paper money by both state and national governments so as to constitutionally eliminate competition with banknotes over what would become the dominant paper medium of exchange (see also Ferguson 1969;1983, 402, 404, 409-10;Nettels 85). Banknotes were having a hard time supplanting government-issued paper money as the paper medium of exchange.…”

“…A popular explanation for why the Convention banned paper money per se has been that delegates held public securities and feared that they would not be redeemed at face value (in specie) if governments could issue paper money (Beard 178-188;Ferguson 1969;1983;Holton 2004;McDonald 89-110;McGuire 72-74). This idea is also Another explanation for why the founding fathers banned paper money is that government-issued non-specie backed paper money could be a tool of income redistribution.…”

“…Reconciling Hamilton's very active argumentation and pursuit of a national bank both before and after the Convention with his silence during the Convention is hard to do without regarding Hamilton as being strategically cunning and deceptive (Ferguson 1983, 404-405;Grubb 2003Grubb , 1791. 31 Ferguson (1969Ferguson ( , 1983 emphasizes the federal debt as the driving force behind the constitutional agenda of the nationalists. The debt problem, however, was solved by giving the federal government the independent power to tax and by the transfer of state lands claimed in the west to the federal government-moving the federal government toward a solvent position asset-wise.…”

“…However, the issue of monetary powers, like the issues of slavery and curbing the excesses of democracy, became one of the prominent subtexts of the Convention (Ferguson 1969;1983).…”

State bloc versus individual delegate voting at the constitutional convention: Did it make a difference?

“…Similarly, we find that five of the roll call outcomes that we estimate would have been reversed by SMR were potentially quite important in affecting the power of the new federal government relative to the states. As several studies have argued (Beard [1913] ; Jensen ; Ferguson ; Riker ; McGuire and Ohsfeldt ; Heckelman and Dougherty ), this may have been the fundamental issue at stake during the Convention.…”