Founding Fathers
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The myths of our legendary founding fathers seem to be unraveling as time goes on. The same can go for our treatment of Native Americans, as well as the first exploration of this continent by Christopher Columbus. Charles Beard offers an interesting analysis of the way the founding fathers set up the Constitution.
Charles Beard claims that the founding fathers created the Constitution out of their own pure economic interest, not really caring about the nation as a whole. He says that the lawyers, merchants, and large landowners who made up the majority of the delegates needed to secure land and receive paybacks from the government. The chart on page 85 of Thinking Through the Past by John Hollitz details the amounts of money to be owed to the delegates if the government were to pay it all back with interest. There is an obvious problem that Beard located which is clear: the delegates were rich white men. These rich white men have an agenda of getting paid back, and the way to do it is through the new Constitution.
The chart on page 86 identifies the occupations of the delegates of New York and how they voted at the convention. The merchants, lawyers, and landowners were the pro-Constitution voters and the farmers and millers were anti-Constitution...