Conspiracy and the Making of the Constitution

Many people today blame the problems of the world on an "Elite" ruling class and that may be true however it is far from a new concept. The following article details many examples of the founders of the Constitution and their possible ulterior motives in creating this heralded document.

This may sound familiar to complaints many lodge today towards America's political system:

America in the early twentieth century had just come through the so-called "Gilded Age" (1865-1900), a period in which urbanization, industrialization, and immigration wrought changes so quickly that old institutions, values and ways of living crumbled or became outmoded. We moved into an era of a national market economy, revolutionary developments in transportation and communications, and at the same time, tremendous anxiety over the state of public morality and economic opportunity. By 1900 America was deeply concerned with the flagrant political corruption that had characterized the "Gilded Age."

It was a time of machine bossism in the cities and states, when the Senate was sneeringly referred to as the "Millionaires' Club," and lackluster presidents reigned. Every politician, it seemed, had his price, and political democracy appeared a sham. Economic mobility by 1900 also looked highly restricted, for big businessmen, sometimes called "robber barons," had piled up huge personal fortunes and apparently had monopolized most of the nation's wealth.

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This period of time was very interesting and led historians to begin researching American history in further detail to uncover where these economic ways of life derived from. Following it back to the founding fathers themselves led some to question the motives of the authors of the Constitution. The main conspiracy derives from research conducted by J. Allen Smith who's online book can be found here:

www.wattpad.com...

What possible motive would there be for the founding fathers to write the Constitution for anything other than what we believe today? This is one possible answer.

Governors and elite groups in the states often found themselves confronted with legislative mandates and laws from which there was no recourse. Under the Articles of Confederation, the central government was so weak that it had virtually no control over the nation's fiscal affairs or the powerful assemblies representing the people in the states. Smith, studying the backgrounds of the 55 delegates at Philadelphia, believed they constituted an economic elite. The new Constitution erected at Philadelphia greatly enhanced the fiscal powers of the national government, and so he concluded the founding fathers were acting out of natural, economic self-interest.

www.americanrevolution.org...

The claim being made is that the "Elite" of America at the time were being hampered in their efforts to attain more power and wealth by the different mandates of the States. However there was a problem. The delegates were not sent to Philedelphia to draft a new Constitution.

When the convention was held at Philadelphia in 1787 it was under strict instructions from the Continental Congress only to prepare a list of amendments to the Articles of Confederation; the convention was not authorized to draw up a whole new Constitution, but only to advise the Continental Congress about what it should do to meet the needs of the Union. Therefore the delegates had exceeded their instructions and were acting illegally.

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Now why would the delegates at the Convention go beyond what the Continental Congress had asked them to do? Smith ties this into his belief that the founders wanted far more power than the Articles of Confederation allowed them.

Here Smith took particular note of the nature of the new central government. Whereas under the Articles its laws could do little to interfere with the internal workings of the states, the Constitution designated federal law as the supreme law of the land. Only the federal government, for example, could pass tariff legislation or issue currency. The powers of the states had been reduced and, consequently, so had that of the people through their state legislatures. Moreover, Allen viewed the check and balance system of the federal government as largely an attempt to restrict the influence of the new House of Representatives, the institution closest to the people on the federal level

www.americanrevolution.org...

In 1913 a man named Charles A. Beard developed an economic conspiracy theory based on these earlier assumptions and this is where the conspiracy get's really good.

What gave Beard's writing the appearance of particular credibility was the fact that he had just unearthed new historical evidence on which he based his indictment of the founding fathers. He had found some old Treasury Department records of the 1790's which listed the names of several prominent Federalist leaders and also those of many other delegates to the Constitutional Convention. He discovered that several of these leaders held varying amounts of old Continental notes, the paper money used to pay the colonial militia in the Revolutionary War. These had rapidly depreciated from the outset because the Continental Congress had not secured them with gold or silver. During the 1780's, there existed a large national debt, and few if any steps were taken to pay it off or to redeem the Continental notes. They consequently decreased in value to only about twenty cents on the dollar. This produced a rash of speculation, wherein many people bought up the paper money for a fraction of its original worth, hoping that the federal government might someday pay off the bills at a higher rate. Now Beard had found a number of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention who held the notes in the early 1790's, just when Alexander Hamilton, as Secretary of the Treasury, proposed a fiscal program which included paying them off at full face value.

Of course, Beard noted that Hamilton had been at Philadelphia in 1787, and that one of the new central government's first steps was to make good the paper money it had issued during the Revolutionary War. And it was made good at one hundred percent face value, something which few people had dreamed would occur. The implications of vested financial interest and conspiratorial action on behalf of the founding fathers were fully developed in Beard's work and appeared to be solid because of his new historical evidence:

www.americanrevolution.org...

So what we have are many delegate to the Convention buying up old money that has basically become worthless than writing a new document changing the very structure of our government whereby one of the delegates later redemms that money at full value allowing many of these delegates to become very very rich.

Beard lists 13 conclusions he arrived to upon his research. They are as follows:

The members of the Philadelphia Convention who drafted the Constitution were, with a few exceptions, immediately, directly, and personally interested in, and derived economic advantages from, the establishment of the new system.

The leaders who supported the Constitution in the state ratifying conventions represented the same economic groups as the members of the Philadelphia convention, and in several instances they were also directly and personally interested in the outcome of their efforts.

The Constitution was essentially an economic document based upon the concept that the fundamental private rights of property are anterior to government and morally beyond the reach of popular majorities.

The entire process, from the calling of the Philadelphia Convention to the ratifying of the Constitution, was unrepresentative and undemocratic; there was no popular vote on calling the convention; the masses of small property holders were not represented at Philadelphia; and only a small minority in each state voted for delegates to the ratifying conventions.

A small band of highly organized men with particular economic and political interests shaped and directed the drive towards holding a Constitutional Convention.

The delegates at Philadelphia wrote a document which was in their direct economic and political interests; the new government would be in their hands and its fiscal policy helped directly to enrich the personal fortunes of the original Philadelphia delegates.

The delegates at Philadelphia met in secrecy and not in an open forum which was subject to public scrutiny. Moreover they never wanted publication of their debates or even the minutes of the convention. All the records were given to George Washington to take home with him at the end of the meeting in the belief that the great patriot of the Revolution would never be challenged for them. Conspiracy historians point out that by getting Washington into their camp, the pro-Constitution forces went a long way in fending off critical opposition. In fact Washington is portrayed as a pawn in the hands of those organizing the drive for holding a convention in Philadelphia.

The ratification procedure was patently illegal: According to the Articles of Confederation, which was the fundamental law of the land at the Constitutional convention, any change in the powers of the central government had to have the unanimous approval of all thirteen states as represented in the Continental Congress. The founding fathers changed this because they knew they could not get ratification under this procedure, so they said that the new Constitution would take effect for all the states when nine of them had registered their approval. The Continental Congress was completely sidestepped, it being asked to send the proposed Constitution along to the states immediately and without any debate or discussion.

The ratification procedure was also clearly undemocratic: The most Democratic procedure would have been to have each state hold a popular referendum on the Constitution, with the people merely asked to indicate acceptance or rejection. Instead, the people were not directly consulted in any of the states. State constitutional conventions were held which decided the question of whether to approve the Constitution or not. In most instances the people were asked to elect the delegates to these conventions, but this was not universal. Under these schemes it has been estimated that only about 15 to 25% of the people even voted in the elections held to send delegates to the state conventions.

Finally, with regard to ratification , it has been pointed out by several historians that in key states like New York and Virginia those opposing the Constitution were in a clear majority at the beginning of the state conventions, but in the end were outvoted. What happened? Some say bribery and other illegal or at least immoral tactics were used to push the Constitution through.

www.americanrevolution.org...

The Constitution today serves as the basis of our government and has worked very well so I only point out these things to offer another version that could have possible taken place during it's writing. I do not endorse this version of events as more recent historians have found multiple flaws in this theory so take it at face value.

I do believe there is enough evidence presented however to offer it as a possiblility.

Already posted today and swiftly removed........probably because the person made no effort to link the original source.

Is this on GLP or something hahaha

EDIT: aaaaah you posted this thread earlier second time lucky eh

reply to post by loves a conspiricy


They trashed the first one because according to them I didn't use the ex text. Everything has been properly sourced.

reply to post by kro32


Indeed, a much better effort this time

Isn't the US Constitution, retrospectively, null and void anyway, because the ''founding fathers'' were a motley bunch of slave-owners, rapists and genocidal maniacs ?

If you sycophantically hang on every word that the likes of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, et al. said, then that's surely propagating the greatest conspiracy in US history.

The dumbing down of the American people started when they unquestioningly accepted the Constitution, without a logical or independent query of the 230-year-old document.

It's certainly not null and void nor has it ever been. The only thing I was questioning were the intentions of the authors of it.

reply to post by kro32


Anytime a society on whole deifies its founders, and doesn't tolerate any public discourse to the contrary, is in real danger - and that sounds an awful lot like the political landscape in our country since, ah, the founding fathers extraordinare built this beautiful land, blah, blah, blah

Well I believe it was built by more than just the founding fathers.

Although they did have a major imact in the direction it took.